CANCELED: State Rep. Will Weatherford to discuss the new redistricting law

October 19, 2011

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Rep. Will Weatherford, one of Florida’s leading state legislators, will discuss the Sunshine State’s new redistricting law on Oct. 26 at the University of Florida. The program is co-sponsored by UF’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service and College of Journalism and Communications.

Weatherford, the Republican Speaker-designate for the Florida House of Representatives and chairman of the House Redistricting Committee, will provide insight into the legislative process for Florida’s redistricting. The program, part of the Bob Graham Center’s “The Next Florida” series, begins at 6 p.m. in Pugh Hall and is free and open to the public.

This event will also be streamed live at www.bobgrahamcenter.ufl.edu.

The Florida House is beginning the once-a-decade process of redrawing Florida’s state legislative and congressional district boundary lines. Those lines can significantly alter the demographic makeup of an area and thus have a dramatic impact on representation at all levels of government.

This year, lawmakers are faced with the difficulty of balancing Florida’s new anti-gerrymandering standards with the legal requirement to preserve minority representation in the Legislature and Congress. Those new standards, passed by voters as Amendments 5 and 6 last year, require that districts be drawn more compactly within established geographic boundaries, without the intent to help or hurt parties or incumbents.

But lawmakers are also bound not to diminish the voting power of minority groups, who now elect three black and three Hispanic members of Congress. So this redistricting process is expected to be a complicated and litigation-fueled affair.

Over the summer, a series of workshops and town hall meetings, using new online mapping tools, created a series of citizen-guided maps for lawmakers to consider. Some 2,000 Floridians spoke at 26 town hall meetings throughout the state. Sixty-eight proposed redistricting maps were submitted by Florida residents, along with hundreds of additional written suggestions, according to Weatherford.

Weatherford grew up in Pasco County and was raised in a family of nine children. He graduated from Land O’ Lakes High School and Jacksonville University, where he played football while he received his bachelor’s degree in business administration. He was elected in 2006 to the Florida House of Representatives. Weatherford serves on the powerful Rules & Calendar Committee and is slated to become Speaker of the House in 2012.