The Florida legislature will reconvene this week to work on new U.S. House districts. See this story. The story does not say how the legislature will deal with the problem that candidate qualification has already closed for this year’s primaries, which are on August 26. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
Also — how about the time involved for ballots to and from the troops fighting barbarians overseas ???
i.e. do MORON judges LOVE to create CHAOS — to subvert Democracy even more ???
The court ordered the Secretary of State and Supervisor of Elections to provide a revised schedule by August 15, that assumes new districts will be in place by August 21. The date for the legislature to provide a new map is also August 21.
The judge also said that he didn’t know for sure whether an election on a new map is possible in 2014.
It is conceivable that there will be further litigation after the legislature produces a map. When the petitions were being circulated, Representative James Clyburn of SC, who was head of the congressional Black Caucus, tried to get the national NAACP to stop the Florida NAACP from participating in the initiative. He did so on behalf of Rep. Corrine Brown, whose district snakes from Jacksonville to Orlando, and who was concerned that it would be dismantled under the new state law.
As it turns out, the district she represents was one of the two declared unconstitutional. The current map was also precleared by the USDOJ (pre-Shelby County). So it is possible that Eric Holder will want to jump in.
The Florida Supreme Court’s opinion on the original senate districts was quite similar to the circuit’s opinion, both on where the invalid districts are, and the reason they were invalid. This is not surprising, since the SCOFLA was the first court to interpret the new standards.
The procedure for legislative redistricting is different than for congressional redistricting (these procedures were already in place, and not changed). In the case of legislative redistricting, there is automatic review by the SCOFLA, and an automatic procedure for calling the legislature back into session, which is what happened in 2012. Since the legislature knows how to fix the map, It is quite likely that they will produce the map by August 15.