Miami voters could soon decide who draws their districts and whether future maps must follow new rules aimed at preventing gerrymandering.
City commissioners are to vote on July 10 on whether to submit a proposed charter amendment to the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections for the Nov. 4 special referendum ballot. The amendment would ban gerrymandering by prohibiting anyone from drawing commission districts to favor or disfavor a candidate or incumbent and would create an independent Citizens’ Redistricting Committee to lead the mapmaking.
The proposed charter change stems from a 2022 lawsuit that challenged how the city drew its political boundaries. In December 2022, a coalition of residents and advocacy groups – Engage Miami, Grove Rights and Community Equity (GRACE) and the South Dade and Miami-Dade NAACP branches – sued the city with support from the ACLU of Florida. The suit claimed the commission districts were racially gerrymandered to preserve one Black district, one white district and three Hispanic districts.
More than a year later, in April 2024, US District Judge K. Michael Moore found that all five districts violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and ordered the city to adopt a new map.
The commission voted 4-1 in May 2024 to settle the case. As part of the settlement, the city agreed to approve a new voting map based on geographic criteria, pay $1.5 million in legal fees to the plaintiffs and place a redistricting reform amendment on the 2025 ballot.
If approved by commissioners today, the proposed amendment would create a new section of the city charter that would prohibit drawing districts with the intent to favor or disfavor a candidate or incumbent and would establish a five-member Citizens’ Redistricting Committee, to be empaneled after each Census or whenever redistricting is otherwise required. Each commissioner and the mayor would appoint one committee member and the city clerk would oversee the application process and timeline.
Committee members would have to be city residents with strong reputations for integrity and public service. They could not have been city lobbyists or candidates for office within the past two years, nor could they or their immediate family have worked for a city commissioner or the mayor during that time. “Immediate family” would include a spouse, parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren or siblings.
Each committee member would serve until one year after a redistricting plan was adopted or until all related litigation was resolved, whichever was later. Members could be removed for good cause by a three-fourths vote of either the committee or the city commission. The remaining committee members would fill vacancies.
The committee would be tasked with drawing proposed district maps through a transparent and publicly inclusive process. It would have to solicit and incorporate public input during drafting and would be supported by the city attorney, city clerk and any redistricting experts it selected.
The city commission could adopt a proposed map without changes, adopt it with changes affecting no more than 2% of any district’s population, or reject it entirely. If all initial maps were rejected, the committee would submit revised maps, which would follow the same review process. Ultimately, if no consensus was reached, commissioners could adopt their own plan by a four-vote majority.
The new charter language would also require that all future redistricting comply with the rule barring favoritism toward any candidate or incumbent. That provision would become binding only if voters approved the measure in November 2025.
If the resolution passes today, the city clerk must deliver the ballot language to the Miami-Dade County Supervisor of Elections at least 45 days ahead of the election. Because of an ordinance that the commission passed June 26 delaying city elections by one year, only referendums will appear on this November’s ballot.
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