How the anti-election-fraud Governor cheated Florida voters | Editorial

A circuit court judge in Tallahassee last Saturday ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis' redrawing of congressional districts in 2022 was unconstitutional, "by diminishing the ability of Black voters in North Florida to elect representatives of their choice."

That was the right ruling — calling out Florida for racist politics — but it came more than a year late. In the time it took the courts to field the complaints about DeSantis' gerrymandering and order it undone, a congressional election came and went and its results stood, even though they were the product of cheating.

Of course that had to have been part of DeSantis' calculus all along, taken straight from the what's-the-worst-that-can-happen school of governing. Even if the action gets cancelled eventually, in the meantime the Governor gets to deprive people of color the full power of their votes for more than a year, benefiting the congressional GOP caucus and presidential candidate DeSantis' standing with his base of red state warriors.

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The Florida GOP used this maneuver before. Its 2010 redistricting also was found illegal. It took some three years for the courts to force those lines to be redrawn. In the wake of that atrocity, though, Florida voters approved The Fair Districts Amendments to the Florida Constitution to make sure it didn't happen again. But it did anyway. The South rose again.

Keep in mind that this flatly unconstitutional skewing of our elections was orchestrated by the same Governor who created an election fraud police force, while also in effect instituting a new poll tax, denying ex-inmates the right to vote if they had outstanding fines, fees or other debts, whether or not they had the ability to pay. He's also the same guy who has supported restrictions on absentee voting, ballot box use and ballot collections, all in the name of democracy.

Even someone who's not an Ivy League lawyer like our Governor should understand the plain English of the Fair Districts Amendments. In establishing congressional district boundaries, the law says, "No apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent; and districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice...."

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Yet that's exactly what Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh ruled was done, in the state's "dismantling a congressional district that enabled black voters to elect candidates of their choice." Marsh ordered the DeSantis district map thrown out and a new one drawn by the Florida Legislature that follows the law.

The plaintiffs in the case included the Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, Equal Ground Education Fund and the League of Women Voters of Florida Education Fund, among several others.

"This is not only a win for African Americans whose voting strength was diluted unfairly when maps, pushed by the governor and forced into law by our state legislature, were enacted, but also a win for all Floridians who voted to ensure their state government cannot silence the votes and voices of its own citizens," said Cecile Scoon, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Florida.

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The decision came at roughly the same time that an Alabama ruling also came down, undoing a redistricting scheme that would have marginalized Black voters there. In that case, a panel of three federal judges struck down Alabama's congressional redistricting for not following their order to comply with the landmark Voting Rights Act. The state is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Tallahassee ruling, sadly, also is on hold, pending an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. Once again, justice delayed is justice denied to Florida voters. Gov. DeSantis cheated and got away with it, for as long as he gets away with it, and Florida and the entire United States are the losers as a result.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida congressional redistricting by DeSantis ruled unconstitutional