BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Telegraph Editor
STARKE — Bradford County is moving ahead with redistricting as soon as possible at the urging of a local law student.
The county gave up trying to address redistricting during the current election cycle, although the plan was to take a more thorough look in preparation for action before the 2024 cycle.
Commissioner Carolyn Spooner had previously urged the commission to move forward as it is responsible for maintaining a majority of minority citizens in at least one district to help ensure diverse representation. A plan presented by the elections office did that by moving a few lines between Districts 1 and 3, but the plan did not address the population disparity among districts.
Law student Colson Douglas pointed this out in his remarks to the commission on March 17. Preserving the constitutional protection of one person, one vote means drawing districts so populations are as nearly equal ad practicable, generally within a 10% range.
“Currently, Bradford County’s districts are outside of that range. The smallest district is District 1 and the largest is District 3, and that population deviation is 55.86%. So, we are currently not in compliance with federal law, and we have opened the county up to a lawsuit, either federal or state,” Douglas said.
One reason given for postponing redistricting was that Florida law restricts county redistricting to odd-numbered years. Douglas said that federal law takes precedent, and complying with federal law requires proceeding now.
Douglas’ research went back to the county’s last redistricting — 2012, an even-numbered year.
“The current districts were enacted in 2012, an even-numbered year, and we had the same county attorney as we do today. So, I don’t see why we’re using the odd-numbered year provision as a shield to doing what is constitutionally required,” he said pointing to court and attorney general opinions to prove his point.
Using the same online program the city of Starke used to draw its proposed district lines, Douglas presented his own maps for commissioners to review.
“(The maps) exclude prisoners, keeping commissioners in their current districts, improve minority representation above the 50% threshold, and keep the population of all districts within 3% of each other, well below that 10% federal requirement,” Douglas said.
He received very positive feedback from the board for his efforts. Commissioners agreed to move forward, and attorney Will Sexton confirmed that election officials will be at the board’s April 4 meeting to go over the map drawing software, which would allow them to manipulate the proposed maps or draw new maps.
