When voters approved a nicely worded amendment to the state Constitution in 2010 they may have thought the constant squabbling over political districting would be over.
Wrong.
The Florida Senate, Florida House and congressional districts are redrawn after every census.
It isn't easy. What makes the task even more complicated are efforts by liberals to discriminate on the basis of one's skin color.
In 1992, the courts wound up drawing congressional districts. They contained so-called minority access districts intended to favor Democrats by corralling black voters who vote for Democrats 90 percent of the time into districts.
Later, Democrats realized that by doing so they had left surrounding districts full of Republicans.
Liberals call this self-imposed outcome bleaching and a conservative plot.
The Supreme Court later said you could not draw a district based solely on skin color, but Democrats fought to preserve them, citing the Voting Rights Act. Lawsuits followed the 2001 redistricting effort also.
Then came the 2010 amendment seeking to require fair districts. Voters overlooked the fact that politicans always want to win, and therefore define fair as that which will give us the greatest advantage.
The complainers claim the maps were drawn in secrecy. Last year the Legislature drew districts with substantial public input at numerous hearings, even providing a website on which voters could draw their own districts and submit them for consideration. A well-known political science professor wrote, Citizen participation in the 2012 round of redistricting was at an all-time high.
The resulting contiguous and complete districts eventually were given an OK by the Florida Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the League of Women Voters, which claims to be nonpartisan (and yet had submitted its own map, giving greater preference to Democrats), and the Democratic Party challenged the districts in court.
Some people imagine that if a bipartisan commission or computers drew the lines the result would be fair and impartial. However, someone has to program computers and bipartisan means two groups of partisans.
Liberal complaints against districts drawn by the Legislature use the word gerrymander and accuse the Republican majority of seeking partisan advantage. Floridians apparently are supposed to believe that during the decades Democrats ran the Legislature they always sought to give Republicans equal opportunity in getting elected and never, never, never tried to ensure that an incumbent was protected.
One also might be inclined to think that liberal utopians merely are seeking a world of purity in thought and deed, with fairness and justice for all.
Balderdash. Liberals seek a world that gives more liberals more chances of being elected to more offices, so they can have more control over more people's lives and further diminish individual liberty.
It's what they do.
At the risk of being accused of practicing law without a license, I will advise the court what to do with these cases: toss them out. I'll leave it to the judge's discretion whether to punish the plaintiffs for filing frivolous lawsuits.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as speech writer for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
