New Senate District Numbers To Be Picked Tuesday
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MIAMI (CBSMiami/NSF) -- The state Office of the Auditor General will conduct a lottery to randomly assign Senate district numbers on Tuesday, said Senate President Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, in a memo released Monday.
The lottery comes after Leon County Circuit Judge George Reynolds last week approved a Senate redistricting plan proposed by voting-rights groups that have waged a long-running legal battle against existing Senate districts.
In the memo, however, Gardiner noted that the renumbering process does not "preclude the possibility the Senate will take further legal action in this case."
Related: Judge Approves Voting-Rights Groups' Senate Map
All 40 Senate seats are expected to be up for election in 2016 because of redistricting. But renumbering is important, at least in part, because the assignment of odd or even numbers can determine which senators are required to run again in 2018 and which will run again in 2020.
The legal battle stems from arguments by the voting-rights groups that lawmakers violated constitutional anti-gerrymandering standards when drawing the existing districts.
(The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.)
