Redistricting wars return, with the question of shielding legislators from discovery

The latest fight over the state’s congressional redistricting map came before a Tallahassee appeals court Tuesday as lawyers for the state argued that legislators and their political consultants should not have to testify about how they made their decisions.

The congressional maps became law last year, but are now under fire from seven residents from Key West to St. Petersburg and from a coalition of voters groups who allege that lawmakers drew the maps “with the intent to favor the Republican Party and incumbents” in violation of the state Constitution.

Last month, Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis ruled that the legislature’s leaders must turn over their emails from political consultants and testify under oath as part of the lawsuit.

Before that could happen, however, lawyers for the House and Senate filed an appeal. On Tuesday, they argued that requiring lawmakers to give hours of depositions about their intent would violate their “legislative privilege” under Florida law and subject them to legal intimidation. More here.

Emails show legislative staff talked with party consultants over redistricting maps

Florida’s legislative leaders appear to have authorized their staff to use private email accounts, secret “dropboxes” and to engage in “brainstorming meetings” with Republican Party of Florida consultants in attempting to draw favorable political districts, despite a constitutional ban on such coordination.  Download E-mails (Bainter, Reichelderfer & Heffley)

The allegations arise from a lawsuit challenging the Senate and congressional redistricting that include emails showing how top deputies of Senate President Don Gaetz, House Speaker Will Weatherford and several of Gaetz’s consultants were in frequent contact with consultants who drafted and analyzed maps. Redistricting is done every 10 years to redraw boundaries of legislative and congresssional districts to ensure equal representation.

The emails show that just a month after voters approved the amendment banning all coordination between the party and lawmakers in 2010, Rich Heffley, the RPOF political consultant who served as a close advisor to Gaetz, called a redistricting “brainstorming” meeting to be held in the chairman’s conference room at RPOF headquarters in Tallahassee.

Heffley listed the expected participants, which included Weatherford’s redistricting chief of staff, Alex Kelly; Gaetz’s redistricting general counsel Andy Bardos; Gaetz’s district aide Chris Clark, and the political consultants running the House and Senate 2012 Republican election campaigns: Frank Terraferma, Joel Springer, Andy Palmer, Marc Reichelderfer, and Pat Bainter. Also attending: the lawyers advising the House and Senate on their redistricting efforts, George Meros and Ben Ginsberg. Story here.

One alleged ballot-broker goes missing, another ordered to testify in N. Miami absentee fraud challenge

Two women--one known as “Teacher Carline” and another who branded herself as the “Queen of Absentee Ballots”—have become central figures in a court case challenging a razor-thin South Florida primary race that hinges on allegations of voter fraud.

 On Monday, a Leon County circuit court judge ordered Carline Paul, who allegedly acted as a ballot broker in North Miami’s Haitian community, to fly to Tallahassee on Wednesday to testify. Noucelie Josna, the self-described absentee ballot queen also accused of tampering with votes, has apparently gone off the radar.

 “She’s gone completely AWOL,” said JC Planas, an attorney representing Rep. John Patrick Julien, D-North Miami, in his challenge of his 13-vote loss to Rep. Barbara Watson, D-Miami Gardens.

In his court challenge, Julien alleges that several dead people cast absentee ballots from one North Miami nursing home, and Paul went to another to gather up absentee ballots from people who now say they never voted in the Aug. 14 primary.

Watson’s campaign paid $1,000 to an entity owned by Paul, who ran radio ads telling Haitian Creole-speaking North Miamians to “consult” with her before casting their absentee ballots, in order to “vote correctly.”

Watson in the past has denied any fraud in her campaign. Julien has said that Josna played a role in collecting fraudulent absentee ballots, and Planas believes that’s why she has not responded to a court subpoena. A private investigator has been called in to track her down.

Of dead voters, Haitian ballot brokers and fraud-ridden nursing homes: The Julien-Watson files

A Haitian ballot broker, known around North Miami’s Creole radio circles as “Teacher Carline,” allegedly gathered up fraudulent absentee ballots from a nursing home during the Aug. 14 primary elections, according to new court filings from Rep. John Patrick Julien, D-North Miami.

Julien filed a lawsuit earlirer this month to challenge his razor-thin loss to Rep. Barbara Watson, D-Miami Gardens, in the Democratic primary for District 107, and has alleged absentee ballot fraud almost from the day he lost the race by 13 votes.

An explosive new complaint, filed Friday, provides more details into what Julien has called a tainted election. It alleges that several dead people cast absentee ballots from one North Miami nursing home, and Carline Paul went to another to gather up absentee ballots from people who now say they never voted in the Aug. 14 primary.

Watson’s campaign paid $1,000 to an entity owned by Paul, who ran radio ads telling Haitian Creole-speaking North Miamians to “consult” with her before casting their absentee ballots, in order to “vote correctly.”

 Watson’s campaign also paid a woman named Noucelie Josna, whose business card describes her as “The Queen of Absentee Ballots.”

 Watson in the past has denied any fraud in her campaign. Julien has said that Josna played a role in collecting fraudulent absentee ballots.

 One nursing home described in the complaint as a fraud hotspot was called “Watercrest.” At least 10 individuals requested absentee ballots all on the same day and voted on Aug. 14 in the primary. Four of those voters were either dead or no longer stationed at the nursing home and several others said that someone else filled out their ballots they did not remember who they voted for, according to the complaint.

 The Miami-Dade Elections Department did not supervise the voting, the complaint states.

 At the Claridge House nursing home, six people voted by absentee ballot. Julien’s complaint states that Paul’s mother was once stationed at Claridge House, and that Paul is still a “constant presence” there.

 Julien’s complaint claims that several people who cast absentee ballots on from the Claridge House say they never voted in the Aug. 14 primary.

A voter's guide to Miami-Dade's nasty primaries

This is the election of ringers, dirty tricks and vicious mailers — with a touch of voter fraud.

“Nasty is the new normal,” said Dan Gelber, a former Democratic lawmaker from Miami Beach. “Every election seems like it’s worse than the one before. This year, we have so many races, that it seems particularly awful.”

From congressional to legislative to county races, candidates and shadowy political committees have dredged up divorce records, filed court complaints, propped up ringers to run against rivals, hurled charges of corruption or questioned opponents’ sexuality, national origin or addiction to pornography.

The specter of the so-called “Causeway Cannibal” was even invoked in one Spanish language radio spot. It stopped just short of accusing the county’s mayor and a state representative of complicity in a widening fraud scandal centering on Hialeah’s absentee-ballot brokers, known as “boleteros.”

“I am the boletera of Carlos Giménez and Eddy González, and I am here to get your ballot,” a sinister woman says in the radio spot after knocking on the door of an old lady. No evidence yet shows Giménez or González knew anything of the alleged crimes .

The ad was produced by the political committee called “Citizens for a Reality Check,” which Gonzalez’s lawyer unsuccessfully sued. The force behind the committee, consultant Sasha Tirador, got her employee Maykal Balboa to run against the incumbent, who plans to file elections complaints against her and Balboa.

Voters seem to be responding to it all by … voting. More than 123,000 early and absentee ballots have been cast so far. But turnout for primaries is historically low. In 2008, about 191,000 Miami-Dade voters — just 16 percent of all registered voters — cast ballots.

Much of the hardball politics will likely subside after the Tuesday primaries, which pit Democrats against Democrats and Republicans against Republicans before the parties’ nominees face each other in the general election.

Because candidates in primaries generally agree on policy, they’re all but forced to get personal and question the background of their opponents.

But the powder keg of this mean-season primary had even more explosive ingredients.

More here

Gaetz tells Senate 'elections will be held on time'

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, the Senate redistricting chairman and incoming Senate president, exalted in his redistricting victory Friday in a letter to his Senate colleagues, sent moments after the court validated the Senate's revised maps.

"Contrary to the fears or perhaps the hopes of the cynics and the critics, Florida’s citizens will now go forward to choose from among their neighbors who will represent them in the Senate and House of Representatives,'' Gaetz wrote. "Those elections will be held on time. Absentee and overseas ballots will be sent well in advance.  Early voting will occur as scheduled."

Here's his letter:

Pariente urges attention be given to flaws in Florida's redistricting process

In a 17-page concurring opinion to the court decision to validate the Senate map, Justice Barbara Pariente concludes that Florida’s redistricting process, while improved because of the new Fair District amendments, still contain flaws that could result in the will of voters not being served.

“The bottom line is that while the goal of the new amendment is laudatory, it is imperative that there be further exploration of the limitations of time, process, and the language of the ―intent standard,’’ Pariente wrote.

Pariente explored that time constraints imposed by existing Constitutional provisions and concluded they are unrealistic. She said the process by which legislators draw maps with an "intent" not to favor or incumbents or political parties is inherently conflicted and the will of the voters might better be served to require that districts be “competitive” rather than to suggest that political intent be barred.

Pariente showed us again how she has become the court’s most vocal redistricting critic with her treatise on the requirement in the Fair District amendments requirement that the maps be draw with no intent to protect incumbents or political parties.

She then included this list of comparisons – between the invalidated Senate plan, the redrawn Senate plan, the coalition‘s alternative plan, and the Democratic Party’s alternative plan which show that despite Democratic voter performance and registration numbers, Republicans were given the numerical advantage in the maps. “This partisan imbalance naturally raises questions,” she wrote.

Dems and Repubs bicker over who's to blame in failed redistricting deal

Slapped down by one Supreme Court ruling and facing years of partisan legal wrangling over the Legislature’s redistricting plans, the Senate’s top Republican quietly met with the head of the Florida Democratic Party last month to discuss a deal that could end the lawsuits.

It didn’t work. Now, while both sides agree the meetings took place, each suggests the other is misrepresenting the reason the deal was rejected.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, the chairman of the Senate Redistricting Committee, told the Herald/Times Monday that he was approached repeatedly by former state Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach, who served as an intermediary for Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith.

Supremes push back at opponents to Senate's redrawn maps

Within minutes of the opening arguments before the Florida Supreme Court Friday, two justices lashed into lawyers for opponents of the legislatively-drawn map when they concluded that the court rejected more than eight flawed districts when it threw out the Senate map March 9.

 “Speaking for the person that wrote it, it was pretty clear that there were certain districts that were specifically invalidated,’’ said Justice Barbara Pariente, the author of the 5-2 opinion that forced the state Legislature to return in an extraordinary session to revise its Senate map.

She suggested that it would be unfair to the Senate if the court were to reopen districts where challenges previously were rejected “or the burden of the challenges were unmet.”

Justice Peggy Quince also raised doubts about the arguments raised by the Florida Democratic Party and the coalition of voter groups that want the court to reject the entire map. "Why would want we want to go back and look at others? We looked at the whole thing,'' she said. "It just doesn't resonate."

But Paul Smith, lawyer for the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters, the National Council of La Raza and Common Cause, said that the court must make sure that the new map adheres to the Fair District standards approved by voters and the new map clearly does not do that.

Congressional redistricting maps come under fire in Leon circuit court

Florida voters deserve not to have “another 10 years of partisan gerrymandering” so the court should throw out a congressional map drawn by legislators to protect incumbents, argued Democrats and a coalition of voting groups before a Leon County court judge Wednesday.

Armed with the Florida Supreme Court’s 5-2 opinion rejecting the legislature’s Senate map, lawyers for the a group of citizens, the Florida Democratic Party and the Fair Districts coalition said the congressional map is chock full of the same flaws and urged Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis to reject them.

“If it’s left in place, even for one election, it will have reverberations that will be unfortunate,’’ said Paul Smith, lawyer for the coalition.

Lawyers for Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature, however, told the court to leave the map alone. They said it is a reflection of the delicate balance lawmakers had to make to protect minority voting rights while also complying with the new anti-gerrymandering standards. The court must give legislators the prerogative to draw its own maps and, they argued, if the judge has doubts about the map, he should wait until after the November elections to conduct a trial.