Florida Will Be A Teensy Weensy Less Gerrymandered

The map above shows the 6 most gerrymandered districts in America. Starting at top left they are NC-12 (Mel Watt), FL-05 (Corrine Brown), PA-07 (Pat Meehan), MD-03 (John Sarbanes), NC-01 (G.K. Butterfield), and TX-33 (Marc Veesey). All these districts, except Maryland's, were drawn by Republican legislatures with the goal of limiting the impact of minority voters.

Yesterday, just when Vox was publishing Andrew Prokop's post on what America would look like without gerrymandering-- hint: "House Republicans won only 49% of Pennsylvania's popular vote, they won 72% of its House seats"-- the Florida legislature special session passed a narrowly interpreted compliance with Judge Terry Lewis ruling that insisted on the tiniest of changes to two gerrymandered districts, Corrine Brown's and Daniel Webster's.

A new map was approved by the legislature yesterday, 71-38. It was drawn by Republicans and excluded all Democrats from participating. The map still leaves the state hideously gerrymandered but took African-American voters in Sanford out of Corrine Brown's district and put them in John Mica's district. It also took downtown Orlando out of Daniel Webster's district and put it in Alan Grayson's district, giving Webster a pretty Democratic part of Polk County that Grayson currently represents. Not much else changed.

Daily Kos charted the changes in the Obama-Romney vote from the old lines to the new lines in the 7 districts that had any changes. Below are the Obama shares in each of the 7 districts, first old, then newly drawn

• FL-05 (Corrine Brown)- 71.0/68.7% (-4.5%)
• FL-06 (Ron DeSantis)- 41.3/41.8% (+1.0%)
• FL-07 (John Mica)- 47.0/48.0% (+2.0%)
• FL-09 (Alan Grayson)- 61.8/59.8% (-3.9%)
• FL-10 (Daniel Webster)- 45.7/47.1% (+2.8%)
• FL-11 (Richard Nugent)- 40.1/40.1 (-0.1%)
• FL-17 (Tom Rooney)- 41.1/41.1% (+0.03)

Brown's district and Grayson's district become slightly less blue but each is already so blue that it is not a threat to either of them. The two congressmen who're threatened by this-- though not while Steve Israel is running the DCCC-- are John Mica and Daniel Webster. Either would now be vulnerable to a solid Democratic challenge. One cycle thinking on the part of the DCCC means there are no solid, obvious candidates on the bench, although Scott Randolph could probably beat Webster unless Wasserman Schultz or Israel undermined him.

The changes in DeSantis', Nugent's and Rooney's districts are completely inconsequential from an electoral perspective. Next step is for Judge Lewis to approve it-- which should be no problem, since it is exactly what he asked for-- and then for Rick Scott to sign off. At that point… it's unclear when the new boundaries will kick in. The primary is August 26.