Gov. Ron DeSantis is convening the Legislature for a Special Session to redraw congressional district lines, mid-decade. This is an extraordinary departure from normal. He says the purpose is to rebalance districts due to Florida’s population growth. He’s not telling the truth. There is no reliable census data to do so and there won’t be until the 2030 national census.
Redistricting was not on anybody’s radar until May of 2025 when president Trump called on Texas to redistrict for the stated purpose of gaining five more Republican districts by gerrymandering. Trump then broadened his request to all states under Republican control. DeSantis jumped on the redistricting bandwagon. Republicans already hold 20 of Florida’s 28 congressional seats, but some commentators speculate that they can grab four more by partisan redistricting.
Of course, DeSantis cannot tell the truth about his intentions, because gerrymandering is illegal under Florida law. So he pretends to stand behind the fiction that he is “rebalancing.” I don’t think so. And even if partisan redistricting were not contrary to Florida law, it is fraudulent, unethical, morally repugnant and simply wrong.
The proposed redistricting is un-American and anti-democracy. The way that elections are supposed to work is that the voters pick who they want to represent them in Congress. What DeSantis wants is to have the representatives pick the right group of voters to assure their election. That is rigging the elections and mocking the will of voters. We should not stand for such cynical election interference.
The elected officials who will participate in this Special Session take a vow to protect and defend the Constitution. There is no more important right in the Constitution than the right to vote. How can any legislator square the idea of redistricting to cherry pick winners with their oath of office? They cannot. They can only try to mask their actions with deceptive rhetoric and a cynical lust to win by any means. Party over country.
It is truly ironic that such election tampering is to occur as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary. How our Founding Fathers must be roiling in their graves as they watch. They fought a revolution to throw off a government that they had no say in choosing. Having won, they constructed a government of the people’s choosing with periodic elections to hold our elected representatives accountable to us. Redistricting hollows out these goals if the outcome is assured before the first vote is cast.
Donald Trump has a proven history of attempting to overthrow elections when he doesn’t like the results. After losing to Biden in 2020, he attempted to have false sets of electors sent to Washington; he attempted to have the Georgia Secretary of State “find 11,780 votes” to overturn that state’s results; he tried to intimidate his vice president to not certify the election (a power the vice president did not have), and he called forth his supporters to stop the Congress from certifying the election, leading to the insurrection of January 6th. This is not a man anyone should follow.
But all is not yet lost. We are better than this. Our country is better than this. And in Indiana, a Republican controlled state, the Republican majority refused to collude in such corrupt redistricting. They stood up for the integrity of their electoral process. Our Florida legislators have that same opportunity. They have the ability to stand on the correct side of history.
We need to let them know that doing the right thing is what we want and expect. In this digital age, it is easy to let them know where we stand. We cannot expect them to represent us if we don’t tell them where we stand. I urge you to sent them a message today: Do not redistrict for partisan purposes. Keep our elections honest. Please.
Bruce Armstrong is an adviser to and spokesperson for Florida Open Primaries, a project of Open Primaries. Bruce and his wife Susan reside in Naples and have been Florida citizens for over 25 years.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Redistricting is rigging elections | Opinion
Reporting by Bruce Armstrong / Fort Myers News-Press
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