Today was a dark day for Democracy in the banana republic that is the state of Florida:
http://www.tallahassee.com/...
Many Floridians held out the hope that fairness could have been restored to the process of redistricting by taking that power out of the hands of the legislature into the hands of a bipartisan commission instead. However, the amendment violated the Single Subject Provision of the Florida Constitution (Article 9 Section 3) according to the Florida Supreme Court today.
I worked on getting this ballot past the signatures stage. I spent my entire fall semester getting signatures as well as portions of the previous summer. This really blows.
However, this does lead back to a point I made in my post on Retaking the Legislature (http://www.dailykos.com/...). Retaking the legislature is still a possibility, and what this defeat should encourage us to do is put a lot more time and effort into rebuilding the party's languishing and ineffective infrastructure here in Florida so we can at least compete in legislative races again. As I point out in my retaking the legislature post, even under the current system, Republicans are still somewhat vulnerable - and victory depends on the level of organization the state and county parties have to back a candidate.
No doubt today is a dark day, but we must still make plans for the future, and always hope for a better tommorrow.