Red state gerrymander scheme blown up by admission from its own architect: reporter

The architect of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' mid-decade redraw of the state's congressional districts just made a major admission that would make the entire exercise illegal.

According to HuffPost's S.V. Date in a post to X on Monday, "Jason Poreda, DeSantis’ map drawer, admit[ted] in open committee testimony that he considered partisan data when drawing his new map because he disregarded the constitutional ban on partisan intent."

The map in question redraws districts, predominantly around Orlando, Tampa, and South Florida, in a way that makes four districts currently held by Democrats much more favorable to Republicans, with the intent to leave just three districts out of 28 as Democratic-leaning in the nation's third-largest state, where Democrats consistently win at least 40 percent of the vote.

The Florida Fair Districts Amendment, passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2010, puts restrictions on how maps can be drawn, most chiefly prohibiting the redrawing of maps to favor or disfavor political parties or incumbents.

Until this point, DeSantis has been careful when discussing a potential redistricting session to avoid explicitly saying the intent of the map is to give Republicans extra seats, instead focusing on his belief that the current map — itself widely considered an aggressive partisan and racial gerrymander — relied on a U.S. Census that undercounted the state population and may have illegally benefited racial minorities.

If the Florida legislature passes DeSantis' map or something close to it, any challenge under the Fair Districts Amendment would have to go through state courts, which are largely dominated by judges DeSantis himself appointed.