Watching Florida's partisan redistricting tug of war, no wonder it's so hard to get young people interested in their government. All they see is politics -- and they don't find much there to like or admire.
Who can blame them?
Florida's redistricting process has been litigated for two years. It's a perfect example of politics uglifying government, being used to deny citizens their constitutional rights. What we've been watching for the last several weeks is somebody's government somewhere, but not America's.
The underlying redistricting lawsuit was filed by a League of Women Voters of Florida-led coalition of plaintiffs. League of Women Voters. No partisanship there if you're a Democrat.
The coalition claimed the state's congressional maps were drawn to favor Republicans during the 2012 redistricting process, which is at odds with anti-gerrymandering provisions in the state Constitution.
Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis agreed, and after a 12-day trial during the summer, he scrapped the maps. Lawmakers then redrew them during a special legislative session. And Lewis approved the do-over in a careful and thoughtful ruling.
So far, so good.
But that ruling is being appealed by the coalition of plaintiffs for purely political reasons -- at this point, I think, mainly showmanship.
It is my hope that the Supreme Court of Florida will not override the decision of a trial judge appointed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles, a judge who painstakingly heard the evidence and rendered a sound decision. Doing so would harm the Supreme Court's reputation for years to come.
Further, the side issue in all this -- and the one I find most alarming -- is the plaintiffs' outrage over a number of Republican political consultants, "operatives," lawyers and other interested parties -- call them "citizen plants," if that's what they are -- drawing maps to participate in the redistricting process -- and their demands to make the email of these private citizens public.
Gainesville consultant Pat Bainter seems to be taking the hardest knocks.
Why?
I'll repeat it: The email was between private citizens, not directed to elected officials. It was not directed to any legislators on the redistricting committee. Why would the public have a right to any of it? What action did Bainter or any other operative take that would require him to surrender his protections under the First Amendment?
So far the state press has treated Pat Bainter et al. as though they were "agents of the Legislature," despite no evidence to this end and, in fact, testimony to the contrary.
Meanwhile -- and this is the political shenanigans that rip government apart -- agents, paid professional cartographers and statisticians were engaged in drawing maps at the direction of the Democratic National Committee and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. With a member of Congress directly involved, now there is a gun worth looking down the barrel for a little smoke.
Do you think the plaintiffs and their attorneys in the case, including former House Speaker John Mills, don't know this as they leak documents to their special friends in the media?
The 500 pages of email provide no evidence of any conspiracy. All they are is documentation that some citizens who are also political professionals participated in the public process in the same way any other citizen who chose to draw and submit a map had the opportunity to do. And dozens did so.
The exchange of email that went on between "operatives" isn't much different than a club of fantasy football players pushing their wish lists to each other. Fantasy players love the game, but they're not in contact with the ones on the field -- or, in this case, in the Legislature -- actually playing the game.
Show me a single Republican email that influenced a legislator. Show me even one seat that changed because of an email directed to or from "fake citizens," "plants" or "operatives." You can't. There aren't any.
Make no mistake, I believe Florida's redistricting process needs real reform. We live in one of the majority of states where a mapmaker has more impact on an election than the voters.
But flaws in our system are no excuse to allow political shenanigans to make a mockery of the laws of the Bill of Rights. The fact is, we're denying citizens their right to participate and their right to privacy.
In none of the 500 pages of email -- not even one -- is there a smoking gun.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
