Florida Passes New Map to Give Republicans Four More House Seats

Florida’s legislature on Wednesday approved a new congressional map written by Governor Ron DeSantis’s office that aims to give Republicans four more House seats.

The proposal passed 21-17 in the state Senate and 83-28 in the state House of Representatives—the same day that the Supreme Court decided to gut the Voting Rights Act. DeSantis is expected to sign the legislation into law.

The Democrats most at risk under the new map are Representatives Kathy Castor, Jared Moskowitz, Darren Soto, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

While the House session debating the map took less than 90 minutes, Democratic state Representative and U.S. Senate candidate Angie Nixon tried to disrupt the vote by shouting that the new map “was out of order,” and fellow Democrats tried to argue that the move would violate the state’s Constitution, which bans drawing districts with “the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.”

Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell pointed out that the DeSantis staffer who drew the map, Jason Poreda, admitted to using partisan data.

“The man who drew this map testified under oath that he used partisan data to draw up every single district,” Driskell said. “Every single one. And when the governor’s attorney was asked whether Democratic voters were being underrepresented in our congressional delegation, his answer was that ‘this is a normative question.’”

“Members, if we vote yes on this bill, it’s not just that we’re being misled, we are blessing this mess. The timing tells the rest. The governor announces his intention to redistrict, shortly after the president of the United States asked Republican-led states to do exactly that. There is no neutral explanation for that sequence of events,” Driskell added.

The House vote came just an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act by eliminating a majority-black district in Louisiana. The Florida House voted down a Democratic proposal to delay the vote by two hours to study the Supreme Court decision’s implications. On Wednesday morning, DeSantis posted on X that the high court’s ruling vindicated his move to redraw the state’s map.

“Called this one months ago,” DeSantis said. “The decision implicates a district in FL — the legal infirmities of which have been corrected in the newly-drawn (and soon to be enacted) map.”

With Republicans polling terribly thanks to President Trump, the new map could still backfire, as the new districts are not entirely safe GOP seats. Democratic-run states like California and Virginia are also seeking to redraw their congressional districts, leaving the outcome of November’s midterm elections wide open.

This story has been updated.