Mid-decade redistricting debate reaches Escambia County

Florida lawmakers began considering whether to redraw the state’s congressional districts, not in 2030, when it usually happens after the census, but in the middle of the decade. Supporters said it was about fairness. Critics in Northwest Florida said it was about power.

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Sandra McCreary has lived in Pensacola for more than six decades. She said the new push to redraw political maps, just a few years after the last round, felt personal.

“It makes me feel that something is not quite right, that they are trying to do something that is going to negatively impact the African American and brown people’s vote,” McCreary said. “Because there is really at this time no need for redistricting at all.”

Florida usually redraws its congressional maps once every 10 years after the census. But Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican leaders said they want to do it mid-decade.

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State law allows them to do so, and unlike other maps, congressional maps do not get automatic court review. Lawmakers can hold public comment sessions, but they are not required to. That means the process could move quickly, with little public input.

A new poll showed most voters do not want mid-decade redistricting. Amy Keith, who leads the state chapter of Common Cause, the group that commissioned the poll, said Floridians opposed the idea.

“Floridians do not want the legislature to waste our taxpayer dollars and their time trying to make our voting maps even more gerrymandered than they already are,” Keith said.

DeSantis defended the idea, saying the state may have been undercounted in the 2020 census. He described the current congressional map as “malapportioned” and argued that Florida deserved fairer representation.

"We've had really significant growth and migration, and our congressional map should reflect that," DeSantis said at a press conference in August. "When I got elected governor, I think we had about 21 million people. Now we're almost 23 and a half million people."

But voting rights advocates like Jacki Steele of the group Equal Ground said the effort does not square with Florida’s Fair Districts amendment.

“The maps, of course, decide who has the power to fix those real-life problems,” Steele said. “We have hurricane recovery, we have skyrocketing property insurance costs. We have roads and transit, and, of course, there is healthcare access. When the lines are drawn to protect politicians instead of communities, everyday Floridians lose.”

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She warned that another round of redistricting could negatively affect many in Northwest Florida.

“Escambia County has 21% of the Black population,” Steele said. “So when you lose Black-performing congressional seats, communities of color, immigrants, lose that representation, because now you have someone who does not come from your community, is not versed with the things going on in your community.”

McCreary agreed.

“It affects our livelihood, who we can have represented on the school board, who we can have represented on the county commission,” she said. “It will affect who we are able to vote for the ECUA board members. We have grandchildren in these schools, and my nephew has children in the school system. If we cannot get our voices heard to get the right people, we have no future in this city.”

Many opponents said they would rather wait until the next census in 2030 to redraw the lines. But Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez said lawmakers wanted legal clarity now. He formed a Select Committee on Congressional Redistricting in August.

Steele offered some suggestions for the committee.

“Listen to the public,” she said. “Listen to the citizenry because they are your electorate. Invite community-drawn maps. Adopt advisory citizens commissions so that we can increase trust in the process.”

Steele also said that mid-decade redistricting was less about lines on a map and more about faith in the democratic process itself.

“Anything that further erodes public trust just makes it so that our political system just doesn’t work,” she said. “And this grand experiment of democracy will continue to erode. Research shows that voters see gerrymandering as corrosive to the democratic principle. If the rules are this way, what’s stopping the government from changing the rules in the middle of the game?”

If lawmakers approve mid-decade redistricting, new maps could be in place for Florida’s 2026 elections.

We reached out to several members of the Escambia County Republican Committee. They declined the invitation to comment on this story.