Florida Republican state Rep. Janet Adkins was caught on tape devising a way to defeat political rival state Rep. Corrine Brown by redrawing district lines to include African American prisoners who can’t vote.
Earlier this year, Brown sued the state of Florida after Republican lawmakers attempted to redraw District 5 to include 7,000 inmates to give the appearance that the black population had increased. Inmates are ineligible to vote. Despite the suit, Adkins still wants to redraw the district.
You take a look at when you’re drawing these minority access districts, one of the questions that’s been asked is what’s the right percentage of minorities? When you look at drawing that east-west corridor, what’s the primary industry in North Florida? Prisons.
The Supreme Court has required that we reduce and avoid packing minorities within congressional districts. So now we’re going from 60 percent — whatever it was — now, to 45 percent — whatever the new number is, but we’ve reduced it. We do not take in consideration where those people live. It would not be constitutional to take into consideration where they live. But what we anticipate, what the Democrats were arguing on the House floor is we should be taking out when you live in prisons and we should not be including them and drawing them into the district.
“Can they vote?” a supporter asked.
“No!” said Adkins. “You take a look at how many minorities are in the prisons within that newly drawn, proposed Congressional line, how many of them live within the prisons? That’s why Corrine Brown is so against having an east-west [district]. Because they live in prisons and they can’t vote. It’s the perfect storm.”
Politico reported and released the audio recording.
For more on this story, visit RawStory “Busted: Florida GOPer hatches diabolical plan to redraw Dem’s district with black inmates who can’t vote”
