Crossposted on RSLC.com/redistricting:

From the Associated Press:

The amendments as well would require maps to follow existing city, county and geographical boundaries where feasible.The proposals have drawn opposition from state and federal lawmakers of both major parties who say they would reduce minority representation and result in turning redistricting over to the courts.

The critics include U.S. Reps. Corrine Brown, a Democrat, and Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican, who each appeared before a joint meeting of state House and Senate reapportionment committees last week.

Brown told the lawmakers it’s not possible to “take politics out of politics” and that she’s afraid the proposals would turn the clock back to before 1992 when she was one of the first blacks elected to Congress from Florida in 129 years.

Brown represents the 3rd Congressional District that snakes more than 100 miles from Jacksonville, where she lives, to Orange County to pick up enough black voters to form a majority.

Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American from Miami, represents the 25th District, which includes a large Hispanic base on the east coast but stretches across the southern end of Florida’s peninsula to the west coast.

The proposals put minority districts at risk through “standards that are conflicting,” Diaz-Balart said.

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