Speaker Cannon’s Statement Regarding Preclearance of Amendments 5 and 6

May 31, 2011 – Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon stated:

“The preclearance of Amendments 5 and 6 was a necessary step before the legislature could implement them as part of the upcoming redistricting process. More importantly, the preclearance of Amendments 5 and 6 is validation that Florida‟s new constitutional standards for redistricting promote and protect the ability of racial and language minority communities to equally participate in the electoral process and elect candidates of their choice.”

You can view and download the entire release below.

Filed under: Legal, 5, 6, act, amendment, cannon, department, florida, house, justice, preclear, redistricting, representatives, rights, section 5, U.S., voting

Updates to MyDistrictBuilder: Save and Open Functions Active

The ability to Save plans in MyDistrictBuilder has been activated.  Currently, you can only Save in DOJ (Department of Justice) format.  The Open function is also active.  When Saving and Opening, the file extension will appear as “.doj”.  It is recommended that you Save your work regularly.

With the 2010 Census data already available in MyDistrictBuilder, and samples of the American Community Survey data available, users can certainly begin building redistricting plans now.

DOJ format is what the Legislature will use to submit plans for the State House, State Senate and congressional districts to the U.S. Department of Justice.  This format is generally the most common language between redistricting applications.

In addition to Save and Open, there are some changes to the data grid at the bottom of MyDistrictBuilder. 

Filed under: MyDistrictBuilder, application, data grid, department, deviation, district, doj, florida, justice, mydistrictbuilder, open, redistricting, save