Is It Possible to Stop Gerrymandering?

I am not a fan of ballot-initiatives, those petition-driven amendments to state constitutions.  I think it should be harder than that to amend a constitution, because as it is these are driven by majority-rule.  Majority-rule, or pure Democracy, as you know is when seven wolves and a sheep decide what’s for lunch.

So, in general, I think these things are bad, usually resulting in unfunded mandates, like the Florida Class Size Amendment, or cluttering up the constitution with things like pregnant-pigs.

Just to be clear, I’m not opposed to legislation about pregnant pigs, I just don’t think constitutional rights are the answer.

But there’s a ballot-initiative this year that I can get behind, because it corrects something ridiculous: gerrymandering.

This is my Congressional district, district 8:

This is where I live and am <sarcasm>ably represented by Alan Grayson</sarcasm>.  I guess I’ll have to wait for HTML 6 for those tags to work properly …

Anyway, as you can see the district doesn’t cover all of the Orlando Metro area, but does cover much of the Ocala National Forest up North. 

Some of the rest of the area is represented by John Mica in district 7:

Except for the northwest corner, represented by Suzanne Kosmas in district 24; who, presumably, navigates the itty-bitty pathway from the rest of her district on the far East Coast:

And with the notable exception of the middle bit that’s represented by Corrine Brown as part of district 3:

When she can spare time from representing Jacksonville and the 140 linear miles in between.

All in all, the area looks like a jigsaw puzzle:

This lunacy comes about because politicians are responsible for creating the districts and they have traditionally done so in such a way as to protect incumbents and political parties.

Now along comes FairDistrictsFlorida.org with an initiative to try correcting that:

“Congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party. Districts shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice. Districts must be contiguous. Unless otherwise required, districts must be compact, as equal in population as feasible, and where feasible must make use of existing city, county and geographical boundaries.”

The question is: With the included mandate of taking “racial or language” minorities into account, will it ultimately make any difference?  Corrine Brown’s absurd district is clearly drawn to combine primarily black areas of Jacksonville, Orlando and Gainesville.  By passing this amendment, would we just be trading one bit of gerrymandering for a new one?

Why include that language to begin with?  Shouldn’t our representatives represent the interests of a community as a whole? One made up of many different types of individuals?

Rather than representing communities are we on our way to having representatives of minorities and languages?  Instead of districts based on total population, will we be allocating seats in Congress based on a Census of race and language?  Is it beneficial to divide ourselves that way, rather than trying to come together as a diverse community?

I’ll probably vote for this amendment.  It’s worth a try to see if it changes anything for the better, but I’d rather it simply required the districts to be drawn by geographic community, rather than allowing for race to be taken into account.