In 2002, the Legislature re-carved Florida’s congressional districts under the guise of making them more accurately reflect new census data. The process, which is mandated every 10 years, affected Melinda Gallup’s neighborhood in a big way.

“They jumped the river and took a little piece out,” said Gallup, who lives in Jacksonville’s University Park area, which boarders the east bank of the St. Johns River.

“I’m in that little piece.”

The redistricting changed her member of Congress from Republican Ander Crenshaw to Democrat Corrine Brown. It baffled her.

“The river seems like such a natural boundary,” Gallup said. “It just does not make sense.”

Marcella Lowe, her mother, stands as another witness to what the process did to the area. She lives less than a mile from her daughter.

“You go two blocks away, and it’s another district. The whole neighborhood is cut up,” Lowe said. “We need something to be done so the neighborhood is together.”

On Tuesday, Florida voters approved Amendments 5 and 6 with the aim of, among other things, requiring that state and congressional districts be drawn along more compact borders. Because the new amendments will inevitably be challenged in court, however, the effects of the changes, and what direct impact they will have on diced-up neighborhoods like University Park, is not yet fully understood.

Michael McDonald, a redistricting expert from George Mason University, points to one issue when asked why the process seems to make little sense in Florida.

“It’s a very political process,” he said. “It’s just how it’s been.”

The data seem to back his assertion.

In Northeast Florida’s four congressional districts, the 2002 redistricting process — overseen by a GOP-controlled Legislature — swept 87,000 registered Republicans into three districts held by Republican incumbents Crenshaw, Cliff Stearns and John Mica. The makeup of each district switched from having a majority of registered Democrats to a majority of registered Republicans, according to an analysis of voter registration data.

Over that time, Brown’s district gained 37,000 Democrats.

A decade later, lawmakers are preparing to again redraw Florida’s congressional districts, but this time the amendments are the X factor.

They will require that lawmakers not draw state or congressional districts that favor any political party, and that they consider natural borders when possible. Amendment 5 relates to state districts; Amendment 6 to congressional districts.

The latter could help rid the process of political gamesmanship, “but, the questions is by how much,” said Douglas Johnson, a fellow with the California-based Rose Institute, which studies redistricting issues nationwide.

Amendment 6 “will set a line. If the Legislature stays behind the line, the courts will stay out of it,” Johnson said. “The Legislature will almost certainly not do that.”

Paul Renner, a Jacksonville-based attorney who was working for the defeat of Amendments 5 and 6, said the changes could lead to additional court battles.

“What they are trying to do in including a provision that says you can’t favor a political party is give the right to sue to anyone … that does not like the outcome of the plan,” Renner said. He is president of the Liberty Legal Alliance, a group of conservative Florida attorneys and law students.

Brown, whose district snakes from Jacksonville to Orlando, is getting a head start on the legal maneuvering.

The day after Amendment 6 was passed by 63 percent of voters, she and U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., filed a lawsuit in federal court asking that it be declared invalid.

Brown, who did not return a request seeking comment, has been one of the amendment’s most vocal opponents. She is concerned that it will not offer enough protection to “minority access districts,” like hers, that were drawn by the courts during the 1992 redistricting process and are protected by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Those districts are often oddly shaped and would not meet the amendment’s requirement that districts be “compact.”

“No question we would lose minorities, and not just in the congressional districts,” Brown told the Times-Union in October. “This is the only time trickle-down would really work. You have congressional, you have state Senate and House, and you have city council and school [board] districts. They would all be impacted.”

McDonald said the lawsuit is premature.

“The federal suit has to show harm, and she can’t show harm yet,” he said. “If once the new districts are drawn she can prove harm, than I think she would have grounds.”

He said Voting Rights Act protections trump the Florida Constitution, which means Brown’s only potential concern could, again, boil down to judicial interpretation.

“There is a delicate balance between the federal Voting Rights Act and the state priorities,” set by the Legislature, he said. “It’s unclear how far the courts will go to enforce the Voting Rights Act over local priorities.”

matt.dixon@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4174

link: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-11-06/story/voters-said-yes...