LWVFL Needs Our Help Now: 

Tell Legislators to reject the Governor's abuse of power and gerrymandered map!

The Florida Legislature has convened in a special session to consider Gov. Ron DeSantis' proposed congressional map. A final vote on the map is likely in the coming days.

Email or call your state Senator and House Representative and ask they reject Governor DeSantis's proposed map. 

Click here to use a tool from our partner Equal Ground to quickly write to legislators!

Want to go a step further?
Consider contacting all of Florida's state legislators about your opposition to this abuse of power and blatant gerrymander. Click here for a list of all Senate and House members contact information. Read on for more information.

Under the Florida Constitution, the Legislature, not the governor, is responsible for drawing congressional voting districts every 10 years.

• Article III of the Florida Constitution gives the power to create voting districts to the state Legislature. Article IV of the Constitution grants the governor no power over the creation of voting districts. The governor’s only constitutional power over redistricting is to veto bills creating new districts. However, the Legislature, with a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, has the power to override a governor’s veto. The Legislature did its duty earlier this year by passing a set of legislative and congressional maps. At the time, the chair of the Senate Reapportionment Committee, Ray Rodrigues, declared, “This is a constitutional map. It is a good map.” On March 29, DeSantis vetoed the congressional map and called a special session which begins Tuesday. Less than two weeks later, Senate President Wilton Simpson and House Speaker Chris Sprowls announced they would bend the knee and give the governor sole authority over the creation of congressional maps, an unprecedented ceding of power from the legislative to the executive branch.

The League of Women Voters of Florida believes it is the responsibility of the legislative branch to draw a map that complies with state and federal law, not defer to a governor whose proposed map does not.

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The congressional map that Gov. DeSantis has proposed violating federal and state law by eliminating or diminishing minority access to Congress.

• The map originally passed by the House and Senate kept in place a Black-access voting district in North Florida - District 5. The map proposed by Gov. DeSantis eliminates the minority voting advantage there and diminishes influence Black voters will have in Central Florida’s District 10 by reducing the percentage of Black voters from 50 percent to 35 percent. The DeSantis map violates the federal Voting Rights Act, which “prohibits any voting qualification or practice that results in the denial or abridgement of the right to vote based on race, color, or membership in a language minority. This includes congressional redistricting plans.” The DeSantis map violates the Fair Districts amendments to the Florida Constitution, which were passed in 2010 more than 63 percent of the state’s voters. The amendment states that voting districts “shall not be drawn to deny racial or language minorities the equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect representatives of their choice.” That is precisely what the DeSantis map does by eliminating the North Florida minority access district.

The League of Women Voters of Florida believes it’s crucial to our democracy to preserve the ability for minorities to be represented throughout government, including Congress.

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The DeSantis map violates the 2010 Fair Districts amendments by gerrymandering voting districts in favor of one political party.

• In addition to protecting minority voting rights, the Fair Districts amendments mandated that “congressional districts or districting plans may not be drawn to favor or disfavor an incumbent or political party.” Donald Trump won Florida in 2020 by just 3 percentage points, but DeSantis’ congressional map would shift the number of Republican-majority congressional districts from 16 to 20 out of 28 total seats. It’s clear that DeSantis had submitted a map - to be rubber-stamped by the Legislature - intended to favor his political party, an undeniable violation of the Fair Districts amendments. DeSantis has made clear his end game is to overturn the Fair Districts amendments. In a March 15 Florida Politics article, DeSantis admitted his map “is designed to potentially lead to a legal challenge of Florida’s redistricting amendments.”

The League of Women Voters of Florida believes Florida’s politicians, including the governor, should respect the will of the voters, who decided 12 years ago they did not want legislative and congressional districts to be gerrymandered in favor of politicians or parties.