Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature have admitted to deleting records pertaining to the 2012 congressional and legislative redistricting maps.
Attorneys for the Republican legislature insist that they did not know what the deleted records were, adding that there wasn’t any legal obligation to keep the records, citing that there were “no lawsuits had been filed when the records were destroyed.”
Now that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that state lawmakers can be made to testify and turn over records as to whether they purposely “re-gerrimandered” political maps to benefit their interests in 2012, is there any coincidence that these redistricting records were deleted?
“During the legislative process, the published and generally applicable record retention policies embodied in the adopted rules governed the retention of legislative records, including records related to congressional redistricting. In strict compliance with these written record-retention policies, legislative records, including records related to congressional redistricting, were sometimes, and appropriately, discarded.”-Orlando Sentinel
One story regarding possible corruption involving redistricted congressional maps is that of former Congressman Allen West. The Shark Tank reported back in early 2012, a high ranking member of the Republican-led Florida leglislature said that Allen West would be “screwed” during redistricting, before the first maps were even released.
We later broke the story confirming that a deal had been struck by Republican legislators to finalize the existing redistricted congressional maps, setting off a congressional redistricting seat shuffle between West, Rep. Tom Rooney, and Adam Hasner.
West’s congressional district went from a R+1, to a D+7 leaning seat-by far the largest point jump of any of the other congressional districts in Florida. House leadership confirmed to the Shark Tank that the Florida Senate insisted that they alone would draw up West’s congressional district. We just want you to know it wasn’t us.
The Senate, particularliy you know who, wanted to deal with his (West) seat.-House Leadership staffer Could records detailing “the fix” in redistricting West’s 2012 congressional district have been deleted?
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