{"id":250127,"date":"2026-04-28T20:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/250127\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T20:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T20:18:10","slug":"florida-enters-the-gerrymandering-war-against-its-own-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/250127\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida enters the gerrymandering war \u2014 against its own voters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Saturday night, a shooter tried to kill the President of the United States. He came armed, with a manifesto and grievances so inflamed he was willing to commit murder to express them.<\/p>\n

He failed, thank God, because of the heroic efforts of law enforcement, including a Secret Service agent who took a bullet<\/a> to protect the President and fellow citizens.<\/p>\n

Cole Allen is the deranged man responsible for what happened Saturday night \u2014 an evil act with no place in civilized society.<\/p>\n

Radicalization is how broken people find permission. Permission to see their neighbors as enemies. Permission to treat politics as war. Permission to decide that a ballot is no longer enough, and a weapon will have to do. People reach that place when enough voices tell them the same thing: your voice does not count, the game is rigged, the other side is dangerous. Saturday night was one man\u2019s violent conclusion to that logic. The partisan redistricting battle across this country strengthens the foundation that allows radicalization to flourish. Florida is the latest state to bolster it.<\/p>\n

The Governor unveiled a congressional map designed to flip four Democratic seats to Republican. His own staff drew it. He released it to Fox News before state legislators had seen it. A Special Session was called to ratify it in days. And to justify it, his office told lawmakers to treat the Fair Districts Amendment<\/a> as void. An amendment that 63% of Florida voters approved in 2010. The one written into the state constitution in plain language: no district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

President Donald Trump, still in his tuxedo from Saturday night, called for unity and bipartisan healing. That was the right instinct. The question is whether Florida\u2019s leadership will honor it or spend the same week doing the opposite.<\/p>\n

Here is what gerrymandering actually does. It creates districts so safe that the only election that matters is the Primary. Primaries reward the most committed partisans. So, the candidates who most often survive are the ones who never compromise, never find common ground, never put the work of governing ahead of the sport of winning.<\/p>\n

The reward for working together becomes a Primary challenge.<\/p>\n

The reward for obstruction becomes another term.<\/p>\n

Multiply that across enough districts, and you get the dysfunction Americans live with every day: a government that cannot address the insurance crisis crushing Florida families, cannot pass a budget on time, and treats every policy disagreement as an act of war. That is not only a Washington problem. It comes home. It shows up in School Board meetings, city halls, and the way neighbors talk to each other. It teaches children that the goal of politics is not to solve problems but to destroy the other side. It creates a political system in which nobody wins.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Governor argues a pending Supreme Court ruling could make the Fair Districts Amendment\u2019s minority protections unconstitutional, and that the whole amendment therefore falls.<\/p>\n

Racial gerrymandering is wrong, and that question may yet be resolved in his favor.<\/p>\n

But the Court has not ruled. No Governor has the authority to void what voters put in their own Constitution based on a ruling he predicts. If that standard holds, no protection Floridians have ever voted for is safe. The Constitution is not a prediction market.<\/p>\n

Democrats deserve equal blame for the nationwide gerrymandering battle. And while some argue they have done the same in California and Virginia, neither state has a constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering. Florida does. Voters here put it there by supermajority, from both parties, because they had watched both parties abuse the process for decades. Plus, \u201cthey did it first\u201d is not a governing principle. It is a playground excuse.<\/p>\n

Floridians are husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, neighbors and veterans. They sit in the same church rows and the same bleachers on Friday nights. Those identities existed before any political party, and they will outlast every one of them. When party loyalty crowds out those things, and when people define their lives by who they voted for, the country stops being able to govern itself. Communities deteriorate. And the conditions that produce the current epidemic of political violence are always present.<\/p>\n

A map redrawn in secret over four days does not cause that. But it confirms it. It tells every Floridian whose district just got rearranged that the people drawing the lines do not see them as citizens to be represented. They see them as variables to be managed.<\/p>\n

Our children deserve a country that can still work. Not one where the maps are drawn to make sure it never has to.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Nick Weston is a St. Petersburg resident, a former congressional staffer, and a national security scholar. He holds a Juris Master\u2019s in national security from George Mason\u2019s Antonin Scalia Law School. His work has appeared previously in Florida Politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday night, a shooter tried to kill the President of the United States. He came armed, with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250128,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109513,4535,109514,17892,409,109515,109516,28,30,100,29,4833,17867,23752,109517,41125,109518,5145,10351,412,16711,56118,199,9574,17893],"class_list":{"0":"post-250127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-antonin-scalia-law-school","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-cole-allen","11":"tag-congressional-maps","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-election-reform","14":"tag-fair-districts-amendment","15":"tag-florida","16":"tag-florida-headlines","17":"tag-florida-legislature","18":"tag-florida-news","19":"tag-florida-politics","20":"tag-florida-supreme-court","21":"tag-fox-news","22":"tag-george-mason-university","23":"tag-gerrymandering","24":"tag-nick-weston","25":"tag-political-polarization","26":"tag-redistricting","27":"tag-ron-desantis","28":"tag-secret-service","29":"tag-special-session","30":"tag-st-petersburg","31":"tag-virginia","32":"tag-voting-rights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}