Florida’s Republican-dominated state legislature has approved a new congressional map, the latest attack in an unprecedented national battle over redistricting ahead of the midterm elections in November.
The vote in both the Florida state Senate and House on Wednesday came just days after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled the new map, which favors Republicans.
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Currently, 20 Republicans and eight Democrats represent the state in the US House of Representatives. The new map puts Republicans on track to pick up 24 seats in the midterms, while four are expected to go to Democrats.
This is a significant change in the direction of the resulting election, in which the Democrats are considered favored to regain control of the US House of Representatives and are also pushing for a long shot to take control of the US Senate.
A Democratic majority in either house of Congress will serve as a major check for US President Donald Trump in the final two years of his second term.
Questions remain about whether the new map is legal under the Florida Constitution, with legal challenges expected.
Some have also argued that redrawing the map could actually adversely affect Republicans, weakening party strongholds and narrowing margins at a time when US President Donald Trump’s approval has fallen to an all-time low amid the economic blow of the US-Israeli war with Iran.
Some have seen Democrat Emily Gregory’s victory in the race for the state legislative seat representing Palm Beach — home of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort — as an early harbinger of Republicans’ impending election crisis.
Many Democrats in the state Legislature condemned the new map before its passage on Wednesday.
“Y’all are doing this because y’all’s father in the White House is inserting national political objectives into a state-run process,” state Rep. Michelle Renner told Republicans before the vote, referring to Trump.
redistricting fight
The map is the latest strike in the country’s redistricting fight, which began last year with Trump pressuring Texas to redraw its legislative map in favor of Republicans.
After the Republican-controlled legislature approved a new map expected to give Republicans an additional five seats, several other states followed suit, including Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, California, Utah and most recently Virginia.
This process has brought the issue of gerrymandering to the forefront of American politics, in which legislative maps are drawn to advantage one political party over another. Voting advocates have long called for a series of reforms to curb gerrymandering, including creating a non-partisan commission to oversee redistricting.
Trump’s initial push on Texas — and the domino effect of redistricting — represents a deviation from the long-standing norm of redrawing maps every 10 years following the U.S. Census population count.
Last week’s vote in Virginia, in which Democrats were expected to gain four seats, largely neutralized Republican redistricting gains. Florida’s new map gives Republicans the lead again in seats gained in a flurry of redistricting.
Still, despite narrow margins, Democrats appear to have the edge over Republicans in November’s legislative elections.
Florida’s vote comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the congressional map in Louisiana, which was previously redrawn to include two black-majority districts, was unconstitutional.
The conservative-dominated panel’s decision was a major blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which reinterpreted a provision protecting against officials drawing congressional maps to weaken the electoral power of minority groups.
Section 2 of the law has long been interpreted to prohibit drawing electoral maps that would result in the electoral power of minority voters being diminished, even without direct evidence that the maps were drawn with racist intent.
The Supreme Court’s decision states that challengers will now have to prove racist intent to challenge such a map.
The decision is relevant to Florida, as the state’s new map effectively eliminates a majority-black South Florida district that was represented in the U.S. House by Sheila Cherfilas-McCormick, a Democrat who resigned earlier this month.
Black voters have historically aligned with Democrats.
The Supreme Court’s decision could open the door for more states to revisit their congressional maps, though it’s unclear whether any will want to do so with the midterm primary season already well underway.
