Gerrymandered Jacksonville City Council maps will be redrawn this week | What you need to know

City Council has nine days to turn over redrawn district maps to U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard. The redistricting committee, formed just over a week ago, plans to view, edit and decide on a new map by the end of the week.

Howard ruled the last map, finalized earlier this year, was racially gerrymandered. Depending on the outcome of the city’s appeal of her decision, the map used in the general City Council election next spring could look drastically different from maps used the last 30 years.

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The public has been uniquely invited to participate in this – normally once-per-decade – process both by City Council and local civil rights groups. In order to understand the process and the multitude of factors involved, the Times-Union has compiled a guide of everything you need to know going into a marathon of redistricting meetings this week.

How will the redistricting committee work?

The City Council redistricting committee met for the first time Oct. 20 to discuss how the redistricting process would work. Normally, months are allocated to accomplish the task council has about a month to finish – the previous redistricting process lasted a year.

City Council President Terrance Freeman, the chair of the committee, affirmed they could succeed in deciding on a map by Friday, four days before Howard required them to submit their new renderings for her approval.

“This is the tightest schedule I’ve ever seen in my entire life for redistricting,” said City Council member Rory Diamond, who is on the committee. “We can do it because we are smart and because we work hard and I know this committee.”

The committee has not met since that Oct. 20 session, instead choosing to wait until the city’s hired consultant arrived in Jacksonville. Douglas Johnson, president of the National Demographics Corporation, will present his map options to the committee Tuesday.

The committee will then meet Wednesday and decide Thursday on its map recommendation to the rest of City Council.

The full council will vote on the map Friday.

Will redistricting result in more Black members on City Council?

The civil rights organizations suing the city want the outcome of redistricting to give Black voters more influence in electing City Council members. As Ben Frazier, president of the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville, put it, the case is “about power, and that’s what we want – more Black voting power.”

City Council has seven Black members, a historic highwater mark for the 19-member body.

Two of those Black council members – Freeman and Sam Newby, both Republicans – are among the five at-large members who are elected by countywide vote. The redistricting lawsuit has no impact on the five at-large contests.

Five of the 14 City Council districts are represented by Black Democrats. Joyce Morgan, who cannot run again for council because of term limits, was narrowly re-elected in 2019 to District 1 in Arlington. The judge’s order does not require any changes to District 1, which leans Democratic in party registration.

Four other Black Democrats represent districts 7, 8, 9 and 10, which are based in Northwest Jacksonville that is home to the heaviest concentration of Black residents. Those are the districts at issue in Howard's order because she said the city intentionally overloaded those districts with Black residents so neighboring districts would have fewer Black voters.

The civil rights groups suing the city want to reduce the share of Black voters in those districts but still have 48% to 56% Black voting-age population in each of them. That would enable those districts to continue electing Black candidates as they have for decades.

The groups also want the new lines to create a district in southwest Jacksonville that would have enough Black voters to resemble the Arlington district that twice elected Morgan in competitive races.

In that scenario, the four Northwest Jacksonville districts would solidly favor the election of Black candidates, and the two districts in southwest Jacksonville and Arlington would have enough Black residents to make them competitive for Black candidates.

Will the balance of power shift among Republicans and Democrats?

Getting approval from City Council for a southwest Jacksonville district with those boundaries would be a tall order from a council where Republicans outnumber Democrats.

Black voters overwhelmingly align with the Democratic Party. If the redrawn lines result in creating a new southwest Jacksonville district where Black voters have a high degree of influence at the ballot box, that would give the Democratic Party a path toward reliably electing a Democrat to that district.

Currently, only five of the 19 City Council members are Democrats. All five of them are Black.

The Republican-controlled City Council did not show any interest in enhancing the ability of Democrats to win elections when City Council approved district boundaries earlier this year.

When the special redistricting committee meets this week to draw a new map, six of the seven committee members are Republicans: Freeman, Newby, Aaron Bowman, Diamond, Nick Howland and Randy White. The lone Democrat is Ju’Coby Pittman.

Diamond said during the panel’s kickoff meeting on Oct. 20 that the “most likely scenario” for the new map is it’s “going to be different than what we’ve seen here in Jacksonville" the past three decades.

Howard sharply criticized the city's previous boundaries as “bizarrely shaped and non-compact” lines based on race being a “predominant factor” in how the city drew them. Her order says the city “must not” use race as a predominant factor unless it is narrowly tailored to comply with a “constitutionally compelling government interest.”

Depending on how the committee draws lines that satisfies Howard's criticism by creating compact districts, the committee could produce a map that keeps four City Council districts as reliable pickups for Democratic candidates without adding another district that favors a Democrat.

How does a legally compliant map look?

Plaintiffs contend the districts in question violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment – the clause that at its most basic interpretation protects against discrimination by declaring all persons equal under the law.

Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida, said he believes the case against the city to be a strong one and declined when asked to be an expert witness on the city’s behalf.

McDonald has worked on redistricting cases in various parts of the country and acts as co-investigator in the Public Mapping Project, which aims to involve the public in the redistricting process. He has also worked with the city’s hired outside expert, Douglas Johnson, as part of the Ohio Redistricting Commission earlier this year.

City Council has a hard job, McDonald said, because of the precarious nature of redistricting. If using race as a factor, council members have to justify the reason and then narrowly tailor the way in which they choose to address it toward a specific goal, he explained.

If they do not address race at all, however, they risk being in violation of the Voting Rights Act. The VRA, specifically Section 2, prohibits discriminatory voting practices.

When the VRA passed in 1965, it protected against vote denial during a time Black voters were facing intimidation and prohibitive tests at the polls. However, even with protections, voters of color faced a different major problem.

“[The issue] was allowing people to have an effective vote because you would have district boundaries that were drawn in a way to minimize the ability for African Americans, or really any community of color, to effectively elect candidates of their choice,” McDonald said. “So they would either be overpacking the districts, or they would be split across several districts so that their voting power would be diluted.”

To avoid what McDonald called “packing or cracking,” governments have to pass a “Goldilocks” map – one that does not crowd Black voters into just a few districts without having a specific, justified reason but also does not dilute their voting power by spreading them across districts.

McDonald said the city could find out the ideal percentages of Black voting age voters in proposed districts by running a racial bloc voting analysis, which would analyze voting patterns.

He expected Johnson would draw his own version of a compact map compliant with VRA regulations, but McDonald also said Johnson’s maps, as a Republican consultant, would likely benefit Republicans.

What is the 'unity map'?

The civil rights organizations submitted their own desired map for the council to consider called the “unity map.” Individuals involved in the lawsuit, as well as representatives of the Northside Coalition, attended the City Council meeting Oct. 25 to advocate for the map.

“We’re offering new maps tonight, maps that can bring about togetherness in our community,” Frazier said during the public comment portion of the meeting. “It is time for us to work together.”

The groups contend that their map is logical, compact and “undoes the racial gerrymandering that has violated Black Jaxons’ rights to equal protection of the laws, while also complying with the Voting Rights Act and protecting representation.”

The districts under scrutiny in the lawsuit would have lower percentages of Black voting age populations under the map — ranging from 48.4% in District 10 to 56.3% in District 9 — but also a notable increase in District 12 to 39.7%.

How can the public get involved?

Howard criticized City Council in her ruling for failing to address public comment and concern over the redistricting process last year.

“The court finds it significant that despite this public outcry, neither the Rules Committee nor the City Council made any attempt to address or alleviate their concerns,” Howard wrote in her order.

Freeman placed particular interest in public involvement during the first redistricting meeting, saying the committee would take time for public comment at each redistricting meeting – the committee did so in the fall of 2021 as well, to Howard’s critique for being “during the workday” and therefore not as publicly accessible.

The committee has added two methods for the public to involve themselves: a “map chat” town hall meeting and a designated email address.

The town hall will be at City Hall from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday. Additionally, individuals can email suggestions, comments, maps, etc. to 2022redistricting@coj.net. Staff will monitor the emails and distribute them to members of the committee.

What’s next?

The City Council’s redistricting committee will meet from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to come up with a proposed map. The full City Council will convene at 9 a.m. Friday and vote on that map for Howard’s consideration.

After City Council sends its proposed map to Howard, the civil rights groups will have until Nov. 18 to file their own proposed plans. The city and those groups could come together in supporting the same plan and present it to Howard, or they could ask Howard to make a choice from their different plans.

The city will have until Nov. 28 to respond to the alternative plans filed by the civil rights organizations.

Depending on the outcome of the appeals process, council member Brenda Priestly-Jackson has filed a bill appropriating up to $1 million to hire legislative professional services. Anyone hired using the funds, she told the Times-Union, would be separate from the outside legal counsel hired by the Office of General Counsel.

The service would be to aid council either with redistricting or with litigation, Priestly-Jackson said. The need is not guaranteed, but she introduced the legislation in case it became necessary, similar to how the council hired outside consultation to evaluate the sale of JEA in 2019.

Duval County Supervisor of Elections Mike Hogan has said he must have an approved map in hand by Dec. 16 in order to stay on track for the upcoming spring elections. Dozens of candidates running for City Council likewise will want to know the boundaries as they move forward with their campaigns.

The city simultaneously is seeking to put a stay on the injunction that Howard ordered. If the city wins a stay, that would pave the way for the spring elections using the City Council district boundaries that the civil rights organizations sued to overturn. The federal case would continue toward a full-blown trial.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville City Council begins redistricting this week, here's what to know