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DeSantis' redistricting map in Florida is unconstitutional and must be redrawn, judge says

https://apnews.com/article/florida-redistricting-politics-gerrymandering-desantis-d04d4d69a5c52e2997e94fa842f8757e

A judge says that a Florida redistricting plan pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the state constitution.

DeSantis' redistricting map in Florida is unconstitutional and must be redrawn, judge says

A judge says that a Florida redistricting plan pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the state constitution.

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Draw a single unconditional map, you lose the right to draw it and it goes to an independent group who'll do it properly.

Don't give these fascists another chance when they do something unconstitutional.

hglman

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Don't have districts, have proportional elections.

evatronic

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Realistically, geographical representation is important. The low population, rural areas of any state deserve to have a voice, too. Just, not an outsized, disproportionate one that a lot of these shitty maps give them.

hglman

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How does a proportional election remove the ability of rural people to choose someone? Its not a majority wins all election; it's a proportional one.

fushuan

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The issue si that way more people live in big cities than this ein rural areas. I general humans tend to give more importance to their local issues, and having a proportional vote makes the issues of rural areas go unheard, since the big cities will refer for most of the money to be destined to their issues.

At a glance it makes sense, for most of the money to be deestined to the majority of people but rural areas also need repairs, upgrades, and projects to renovate them, since they are the ones that produce and sustain the big cities (in theory, I know that with globalization it gets a bit muddled). Districts exist to make the voice of those that sustain big cities louder, to make it fairer for them.

However, the travesty that is the US has perverted this notion to create completely manipulated regions for their benefit. I would propose for something like "vote power" to exist, so that each vote gets multiplied with some number that is computed from the population of the region that vote was casted or other significant reasons, and then to add all of those votes.

For example, people living and voting in a small town would have double or triple voting power than those living in a big city. The citi will still get in total way more power, but it would help to balance that difference a bit while not letting those in power to manipulate the districts in their favour. This is vulnerable to those in power to manipulate the vote multipliers, but that is way easier to regulate than imbalanced and weird regions.

hglman

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But why? Why should that minority get more than some other subset of people, why not people in poverty or people where it never snows or people of color or LGBTQ?

How about ensuring that everyone gets an equal amount of benifit.

fushuan

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It is a way to ensure that everyone gets an equal amount of benefit. As I already wrote, if it were proportional the bit city regions would have way way more voting power than rural areas, and the needs of the rural areas would go unheard, thus them not getting equal benefit.

If by equal you mean proportionate benefit, sure, but in a democracy the minorities get nothing when their ideas clash with the majority, since the majority wins always. Giving them a boost helps balance thing a bit.

I say this again, what US has right now is a travesty of the original idea, there's other places where this works better. For example, in Spain, the big city regions have more congress seats than regional zones, but it's not proportional to the population at all, the seat amount is inflated in the rural areas. We don't have weird ass regions though, the regions are separated in a historical way.

dx1

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Or have proportional votes on bills directly. Cut out all the distortion, make the will of the people law.

AstridWipenaugh

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On the other hand, that's how you get brexit.

dx1

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Well, that was spearheaded by politicians, I'm saying cut out politicians.

(edit) Plus that does seem to be people's go-to example for this, versus, you know, every awful thing where politicians are currently going against a majority of the public. Abortion, war on drugs, etc., not to mention all the things the public just currently doesn't think about and leaves untouched that end up making us live in a plutocracy.

hglman

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Absolutely, we can do this .

dartos

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I mean it should always be some kind of removed 3rd party drawing the lines. But nobody in power wants to give that power up.

roboticide

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Draw a single unconditional map, you lose the right to draw it and it goes to an independent group who'll do it properly.

Needs to be enforced by an independent party, and as we saw in Ohio, the GOP will just go, "Nah, we think we'll keep it."

Spacemanspliff

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It'll go down just like Ohio. They were told they needed to redistrict, they drew a map, they were told it was unconstitutional and to redraw it, they redrew it, it was deemed unconstitutional and they were told to redraw it, it was deemed unconstitutional and they were told to redraw it. They then were out of time and used the 1st unconstitutional map for the election.

captainlezbian

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Yeah at a certain point they need to have a constitutional map handed to them

SeaJ

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The issue is that many states task the legislature with drawing the map. The legislature gets to pick who voted for them. If they make an unconstitutional one, they just have to draw more unconstitutional ones until there is no time left. If the Court tried to do it themselves because of the legislature's failure, they can sue because that responsibility was directly assigned to them. They need to take that responsibility away from the legislature in their Constitution. This should happen in every state.

Alexstarfire

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They would sue the courts? Who would even oversee that? SCOTUS has already said they want no part of state election issues.

SeaJ

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I should have said appealed. A judge will rule that their 5th map is also unconstitutional and they clearly cannot be tasked with making the map. So the judge makes one that would work or tasks a committee to do it. Republicans then appeal that decision because the constitution or a law specifies that the legislature creates the maps. They appeal up to the state Supreme Court.

stopthatgirl7

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See, THIS. Is the kind of thing AI should actually be being used for.

bitsplease

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You don't even need AI for this, a very simple easy to audit algorithm could take care of it.

Hell, have it generate a few dozen versions that are all approximately as good, and let representatives (or even better, the actual people) vote on which to use

LastYearsPumpkin

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AI isn't magical, you give it instructions to get an output. It also uses history to base its decisions on. Both of those things need humans to guide it, and those same people making shitty decisions now will just use AI to cloak shit in an the guise of unbiased computers.

toasteecup

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Easier said than done.

Mapping is a very unique issue with a whole distinct set of mathematics whose is purpose is to try to make it easier, https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/discrete-mathematics-tutorial/#:~:text=Discrete%20Mathematics%20is%20a%20branch,logic%2Dbased%20statements%2C%20etc.

In addition to that, we've already seen AI school bus routes that had kids riding a bus until 9pm. https://fortune.com/2023/08/16/louisville-jefferson-school-bus-alpharoute-tech-firm-ohio-cincinnati/

Plainly put, having an AI that can understand districting and create districts based abstract ideas like "equal fairness" is quite difficult :(

stopthatgirl7

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I’d rather folks working on AI focus on stuff like making mapping better than on to better ways of ripping off artists and writers.

arensb

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And they will, as soon as mapping is more profitable.

stopthatgirl7

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Which means probably never.

FrankFrankson

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Unless ~~pirating~~ privateering becomes popular again

Uranium3006

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They do, just to rig it instead. Let's use it to make fair maps.

Rocketpoweredgorilla

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They know they'd be completely screwed if things were fair, and not stacked in their favor.

0110010001100010

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Of course, which is why they (republicans) have been working so hard to dismantle free and fair elections. They know they can't win if things are fair.

If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.

-David Frum

SeaJ

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That one pisses me off so much. Democrats were working with them on a legal one. Republicans hummed and hawed that doing the assessment of it would put them over the deadline so instead they should just go with the last unconstitutional one.

Spacemanspliff

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Ohio doesn't actually care if it's policy is constitutional or not. The way school districts are funded was found unconstitutional back in the 90s.nothing has changed.

MisterMoo

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I'm glad I left reddit for other platforms where thoughtlessly cynical takes are also upvoted to the top.

lolcatnip

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What's cynical about thinking Republicans who drew unconstitutional maps in Florida will pull the same shit Republicans in other states have gotten away with?

Spacemanspliff

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What else has ever happened? There has never been any sort of penalty for doing this, they just get away with it. What else is there to do but be cynical.

CapgrasDelusion

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Let me keep track of the most recent gerrymandering rulings: Republican maps violate constitution. Republican maps violate constitution. Republican maps violate constitution.

Outcome: Republicans re-submit maps that violate the constitution.

Judiciary: Well, it's close to an election, we can't make them change it now.

Ad nauseum.

GreenMario

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Abolish the concepts of districts and make all elections state wide. Can't gerrymander the entire state now can ya?

You fuck around and you lose your stupid "district" privileges.

danielton

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It's absolutely ridiculous that this is even legal.

Alexstarfire

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It's technically not.

danielton

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Politicians shouldn't be allowed to draw the district borders in the first place. It's a clear conflict of interest.

mustardman

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Is this a serious suggestion? I'm having a hard time thinking how it would work. I'm guessing each person can vote for every representative "slot"?

EnglishMobster

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Like how Parliaments work - proportional vote.

56% R, 39% D, 4% I = 16 Republican representatives, 11 Democratic representatives, 2 independent representatives.

Sloogs

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Parliamentary systems don't imply proportional representation necessarily. Commonwealth nations like Canada and the UK use the Westminster system, and use a first past the post system derived from that tradition for example. It simply depends on the country and who decided on the details of the electoral system.

hh93

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Both parties create an ordered list of candidates and then they get seats from the top as many as they need based on their statewide votes.

MagicShel

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Can't gerrymander the entire state now can ya?

Wyoming might have something to say about that...

GreenMario

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They have exactly one district, right? They simply don't have enough liberals there.

Wyoming is a shit state tho. Actually scratch that the nature part is great. Too bad we all can't move there and take over two senators. Only need a few thousand voting age non fascists to move in right?

bemenaker

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The state SC said that in Ohio, but the GOP ignored them,and the state SC took their balls off, and did nothing about it.

roboticide

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Yeah, state GOPs are figuring out that if they just ignore their state supreme courts, the two outcomes are: the opposition appeals to the federal Supreme Court with the same, or worse, outcome, or... nothing.

The states that can are at least addressing gerrymandering through ballot initiatives and state constitutional amendments. Ohio is on track for this. Ohioans shot down the attempts at undermining their ballot initiative process, and are now attempting to get a citizen redistricting commission on the 2024 ballot. We'll see how it goes.

bemenaker

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Our SC could have had their own maps drawn and forced Ohio to use it, but they put their balls in their desks.

roboticide

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Yeah, I just assume the Ohio SC assumed if they drew their own maps they would be immediately challenged and have it go to Federal, and didn't want to risk their decision being overturned or something.

Either way, as a Michigander, I'm actually rooting for you guys. Our newly created commission made maps for last election and it was nice that the votes actually mattered this time.

bemenaker

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I wasn't crazy about our amendment to fix gerrymandering last time, I thought it was flawed and exploitable. There was a lot of people who said it didn't go far enough. Turns out that sentiment was correct. We should be getting a chance to fix that soon. I know a signature drive has already been completed but I forget what is on the new attempt.

Kerred

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For more context in this article as well, the judge Lee Marsh was appointed by Rick Scott, a Republican

SeaJ

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I'm sure the next one will totally be legal. And then the next one which will be too late to change. /s

wagoner

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Funny how the party of patriotism and constitutional originalism keeps getting caught breaching the constitution.

stopthatgirl7

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As always: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

resin85

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A big thanks to Marc Elias and his law firm for fighting for democracy. If you're on Mastodon his account is worth a follow to see all the fights they're taking for voting rights. https://mas.to/@marcelias/110997370778062859

keet

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So, they took a page out of Alabama's "Modern Jim Crow" map. Sigh. I'm afraid we (as I am an Alabamian) will use it to bring to SCOTUS to strike down whats left of the Voting Rights Act. If only the "email lady" had won in 2016, we would have a scotus that would actually DO something about this gerrymandering and VRA shenanigan nonsense.

The best quote for this situation comes from the video game character QBert: "$#@!".

TheProtagonist

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Just change the constitution until it fits their needs…

Rapidcreek

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Had to see this coming and SCOTUS already ruled on similar maps. I say this ruling hopefully sticks.

spider

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Zerlyna

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Oh no. /s