Plaintiffs challenging Florida’s congressional maps say an FSU student credited with submitting a map to the Legislature denies doing so.
Attorney for voting rights groups David King says Alex Posada testified under oath this morning that he’d never drawn a Congressional map and never submitted it through the online portal the Legislature set up to collect public input.
King continued, “Assume further that the e-mail account that transmitted the map to Alex Kelly at the House was an account called AlexPosada22@gmail.com, which Mr. Posada denied was his e-mail address.”
In 2012, lawmakers touted Posada’s supposed map as the basis for the final congressional map they passed. Plaintiffs’ attorneys are accusing Republican operatives of creating fake accounts to submit their own maps. It’s part of their case accusing the Legislature of violating the state constitution by drawing districts to favor Republicans.
Today was the eighth in Florida’s redistricting trial, and another GOP consultant took the witness stand to answer questions. Republican strategist Rich Heffley denies submitting maps to the Legislature but says he encouraged others to do so.
Heffley says the Republican Party of Florida paid him $10,000 a month throughout the redistricting process to focus on state Senate races. During that time, he says he gave input on congressional maps drawn by fellow consultant Frank Terraferma and others. But he denies knowing Terraferma’s map was submitted to the Legislature.
“Did I encourage that? Would I hope and expect that? Yes. Did I know that? No," he testified.
Heffley says consultants paid to help elect Republicans shared Senate, House and congressional district maps because the different types of districts affect how the others are drawn and how many open seats there are.
He says he encouraged people to submit maps through the public process, but he didn’t know of anyone doing it under someone else’s name, as plaintiffs charge.
