MIAMI — When attorneys challenging the constitutionality of Miami’s voting map need to back up their allegation that district boundaries were drawn along racial lines, they just turn to the tape.
In public meetings from November 2021 through March 2022, multiple commissioners stated their intention to keep the makeup of the City Commission as it has been for two decades, with districts drawn in such a way that it increases the likelihood that voters elect three Hispanic commissioners, one Black commissioner and one non-Hispanic white commissioner to the five-member board that governs the city of Miami.
Over the course of those hearings, Commissioner Joe Carollo said the original idea of drawing single-member districts was so that “there would be an African American sitting in this commission and there would be an Anglo,” and “that there were three Hispanic districts.”
