Let the voters have a choice now

It doesn’t seem to be good enough that a judge has told our elected leadership in Tallahassee that their attempt to subvert a citizen’s initiative was ill-conceived and unworthy of a ballot position in November.

Now those very same elected leaders in Tallahassee are not only appealing the judge’s decision over their ill-conceived, unworthy attempt to subvert a citizen initiative, but they have filed a last-minute suit to have the actual citizen’s initiatives removed from the November ballot.

Amendments 5 and 6 are citizen’s initiatives for state constitutional changes that greatly restrict what lawmakers can do when going through the re-districting process every 10 years with a new census.

Business as usual has been to re-draw districts that favor the incumbent with registered voter numbers, if that incumbent is in the majority political party, or to re-draw the district to favor the political party currently in power.

The result of this haphazard, wholly political process has been state representative and senatorial districts that resemble something a three-year-old would do with a crayon on a pre-dinner napkin.

For example, the Republican party is currently in power in Tallahassee. To ensure that as many Republicans as possible are returned to office, or win office, legislators will draw districts that eliminate Democratic voters wherever possible, pushing them into single districts they will “give up” to the minority party. This makes for districts that might cross multiple municipal boundaries, skip entire subdivisions and look like an upright pencil with bites taken from its exterior.

Or in the case of one district, run from the east to west coast of the state to pick up primarily Republican voters while eliminating or reducing the Democratic voters and foisting them off into another district. The goal of the prevailing party is to get a solid majority for their candidates in as many districts as possible.

What this also means is that sometimes neighbors across the street from one another will have different elected representation, even though their issues will be identical.

Amendments 5 and 6 are designed to stop that practice and force lawmakers to represent an entire municipal area, or groups of areas that are adjacent to one another as much as possible, even if the mix is evenly split between voters of both parties, or dominated by Independents.

The practice is known as gerrymandering, and it has never bode well for the voter, only for the politician.

Lawmakers in Tallahassee, particularly those who would be forced into districts filled with opposing party voters, are truly scared of the ramifications of these two amendments, so they got together and put Amendment 7 on the ballot. Amendment 7 was, before a judge tossed it off the ballot last week, quite simply a nullification of Amendments 5 and 6 that would have allowed our state political leaders to continue gerrymandering to their heart’s content.

The lawmakers’ claim is that the two citizen initiatives will wind up in poor representation for the minority communities of the state.

That’s typical party-in-power hogwash.

The fear factor for lawmakers is that they will be forced to districts no longer heavily weighted with registered voters from their party, but with people who share common issues and common concerns, leaving their straight-party-line platform useless on the floor.

It will take 60 percent of the voters to approve the Amendments. Amendments 5 and 6 have already been certified by the state Supreme Court for the November ballot. For a lower court to remove it now would show, again, that political parties care naught but for their own power.

But, most of us already knew that.

Lawmakers were elected, so they tell us, to represent the will of the people. If 60 percent of the people in this state wish to end the practice of wholesale gerrymandering, then our elected officials should have to represent that ideal.

Of course, there are dozens of them that won’t be elected officials if Amendments 5 and 6 are passed. And that is what scares the career politician.

Good. Let them fear the voter for a change.

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