Redistricting Petition Popular

The redistricting petition gathering process has been going well, according to an e-mail Buzz got forwarded from Ellen Freidin, a Miami-based lawyer and activist with Floridians for Fair Elections, who's heading up a ballot initiative to prevent districts from being drawn to favor an "incumbent or political party."

"The great news is that after only three weeks of signature collection, we are about a third of the way towards collecting the signatures needed to trigger court review. Collection is going much faster than expected and barring unforeseen problems, we should be able to complete this phase before the end of the year," Freidin wrote to supporters.

Comments

Let me get this straight. They're congratulating themselves for paying people 3 buck a signature and getting 20 thousand signatures for a petition that is so poorly drafted it will never make the ballot. Congrats - another 4 million down the drain Mr. Sanctimonious Cueball

Arlene Deputy Chief of Staff fires assistant for ???????

What’s the real news here.

Arlene; it’s going to take more than a laptop to Eddie back this time. He is the one that knows everything about you and the way you back stab people. He knows all your screw-ups from the campaign to the governor’s office. I can’t wait for him to start blogging.
Shouldn’t there be a new release about Arlene’s long time assistance leaving or was he fried. If he left where’s he going or if he was fired what did he do to get fired.

why is the blog on every item with people who are so negative? I dont get it.

Maybe with an unbiased reapportionment process we can have a legislature more reflective of our balanced party registrastion.

Who the hell is eddie? And who the hell would want to be Arlene's assistant anyway? Can you imagine?

Actually, the better question is, why the hell does Arlene need an assistant? She doesn't do anything all day but boss Kamilah around and take 3 hour lunch breaks.

Do whatever you want to redistricting. It will always be political because it will always be done by people who are members of parties, appointed by members of parties, beholden to members of parties ... you get the idea. But it sounds like fun.

[Chris Brudy]

What a total waste of time. What we really need are decent audits of our new optically scanned paper ballots, come November '08.
How about a ballot amendment that says "Ten percent of the ballots voted in each county shall be hand counted from as many randomly selected precincts as necessary, before certification of any election."
Of course, in '09, we would need another one saying "If the audits show the machines to be mistaken, then 100% percent of the ballots shall be counted by hand before any certification of any election."
Then, in '10, we will need a new amendment saying "The candidates having the most votes cast for them shall be certified as the winners of the elections".
Oh, guess what, the SOE in Sarasota County doesn't like the 5% audits, and thankfully for her and her buddy Kurt Browning, the ballot amendment 55% of her voters approved has now been dumped by a couple of nitwit judges.
What does it take for us honest people to realize that dishonest people are stealing our elections? Property taxes through the roof? Impossible home insurance premium hikes? The halving of our dollar's value? Another bombing campaign in the middle east, this one threatening the oil flow? Maybe when Arlington National Cemetary is filled to capacity, we will finally wake up.
Of course, there will always be enough Bush type morons to insure the decline of American civilization. We have rule by the Bush coalition, Millionaires and Morons. It is time to turn out the lights and sing, all together now, "Hello Chinese Century."

funny how dems didn't want this "unbiased" redistricting proposal when they were in power. this plan or some variation has been floating around ever since '96 when they lost power. so i say "too bad demodorks, you had 100 years of redistricting power, now you can wait 100 years and see how you like it."

Let's just hope that they checked the word count this go around.

Bye Bye Corrine Brown. Bye Bye Alcee Hastings. bye Bye Al Lawson.

This would decimate african american representation.

[Campaign Manager]

10:02 am - it would be nice to get beyond this game of gotcha. I have yet to see anyone give a valid response to the statement that some sort of system to create (relatively) non-gerrymandered districts would be better than letting politicians draw their own.

And the hypocrisy does go both way - yes, Dems were wrong to not pass it when they were in power, but it's also true that Jeb Bush opposed it in Florida, but then raised money for nonpartisan redistricting in California

I wish we could have nationwide referendum to model redistricting procedures after those used in Iowa or Washington (the state - not our nation's capital), but doing it one state at a time is better than nothing.

Besides, wouldn't it be nice to see our state be a leader in something besides hurricanes and politicians who get busted in public restrooms (Bob Allen beat Larry Craig to the punch, if you remember)?

GOP should support this initiative, since they will be the ones left out in the cold very soon.

1:21 - do we get bonus taxes for being "a leader"? who cares - we need to simply do what is best for Florida - who cares about leading other states - that's like getting a job title promotion without the raise, who cares if it's not money in the bank.

THIS proposal - as well vetted as it is - will achieve ballot status, pass FSC scrutiny and receive more than 60% of the vote.

Wanna bet?