“Exclusive: new emails reveal efforts to redraw Florida political lines to favor Republicans”

Naples Daily News:

More than 500-pages of emails kept secret during an ongoing redistricting legal battle shed light on the behind-the-scene efforts by a handful of GOP political consultants to influence Florida’s political lines, according to documents obtained by the Scripps-Tribune Capital Bureau.

They highlight, among other things, an early plan that would have drawn the then-longest serving GOP member of Congress out of office, the admission that former state Sen. John Thrasher did not live in his district, and a strategy to use a well-known GOP consultant to recruit people to submit maps as part of the formal process.

The documents also include discussion of strategies to bring “more population…to minority districts.” During the more than two-year legal fight, plaintiffs raised concerns about “packing,” or placing usually Democratic-leaning minority voters into a single district to make the surrounding seats more Republican.

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