Since it's been meeting, the committee has fielded numerous requests from residents across the county to maintain or redraw district lines to avoid splitting both large and small communities. Out of 13 municipalities, Auffant’s map split exactly one. 

“I am proud to come and tell everybody here I only split the city of Orlando,” Auffant said. “Every municipality is intact. Every community is intact, nothing has been split, and you have basically everything there.”

That doesn't mean every request was honored. Winter Garden, Ocoee, Oakland and Windermere requested to be consolidated into one district and split apart from Horizon West. But with Auffant’s map, the existing groupings remain the same: Horizon West remains with Winter Garden, Oakland and Windermere while Ocoee stays in a separate district. But Auffant’s map would also establish the community of Pine Hills in one district, a request made by many residents in nearly all of the committee’s recent meetings. 

“For years, I made a promise to this committee that I would present a map that had no split communities and only Orlando split as a municipality,” Auffant said. “I come before you today, keeping that promise to you … I know probably some of you would prefer that I would have taken out of other areas. I feel that I was forced to take where I took.”

The map would also split 11 voting precincts, a practice the Supervisor of Elections Office had previously requested committee members do their best to avoid. While that's more split precincts than in any of the other four maps, Auffant still said he was “proud” of having split only 11 of 400 precincts while avoiding splitting communities of interest. 

Orange County Assistant County Attorney Shonda White confirmed only the municipality of Orlando would be split under Auffant’s map, adding that it “incidentally” allows incumbent commissioners to remain in their current districts. She also noted that under Auffant’s plan, there would be no districts with a majority of minority residents. 

“Instead, there are three Hispanic plurality districts, and those districts would be proposed Districts 3, 4 and 8, and the Black plurality districts under this plan would be proposed Districts 6 and 7,” White said.

In a plurality district, a certain demographic comes just under the majority but could influence an election aided by crossover votes from other demographics. In a majority-minority district, however, that demographic will likely control an election’s outcome based on the voting population being more than 50 percent. 

Committee member Alejandro Pezzini said while he was concerned about the “dilution” of the Black population in District 6, he thought Auffant’s map was a “good starting point.”

“I think it needs some improvement, but I'm going to vote in favor of it,” he said. 

Committee member Rishi Bagga called the map a “great start” and said he also planned to vote to advance it despite concerns about splitting some East Orlando communities and what the operational costs of splitting precincts might be for voting. 

“I think I may want to try to play with it to see if we can close some of those gaps with the precincts,” Bagga said.

Committee member J. Gordon Spears, however, took issue with the “strange shape” of District 5 and said he thought the eastern and western areas of the district had “very little in common.” 

“I think that while most of the map makers have been at pains to keep the small communities together, even the rural settlements in a single district, as the residents have asked us to do, nobody seems to care about the city of Orlando,” Spears said. “More than 300,000 residents having their voting power diluted by putting the city into so many county districts … this is diluting the voting rights of the citizens of Orlando.”

[Editor’s note: Currently all six existing districts have a slice of Orlando.] 

Auffant said he understood concerns but that his map was a result of trying to look at the districts the county already has and how it could be improved while still retaining needed population numbers. 

“Yes, it's a great idea to try to make something that is pleasantly aesthetic and sometimes that is pleasantly divided, but at the same time, that's when you're not dividing communities,” Auffant said. “Realistically, what I try to do is [have] the least impact.”

Pushing to approve 

Discussion of Auffant’s map also re-opened the debate about voting down maps that didn’t address every issue versus accepting imperfect maps and continuing to tinker with them. 

“If we keep disapproving maps at every meeting, we're not going to have a starting point, and certainly this map is not perfect, and I do see areas of opportunity, but I think we need to start advancing some maps in order to start working,” Pezzini said. 

Committee member Mark Arias pushed back on the idea that the committee needed to approve a map because the deadline was approaching.

“We all know that we can work on these maps at home,” Arias said. “We all know that we can take these maps and we can tweak them and then present them as our own maps. Nevertheless, I don't think that we need to push a map forward just because we need to push a map forward. That makes no sense to me at all.”

Auffant said though his map was not perfect, advancing to have a starting point was something the committee needed to consider after having already rejected four submissions. 

“I would suggest we advance this and tweak it as much as you want,” Auffant said. “As a matter of fact, my map the last time [during the 2021 redistricting meetings] was not the final map. John [Gordon Spears], you changed my map. It came out better, and it was the final map. So, let's try to find a better way.”

With two members absent, the motion to accept Auffant’s map passed 10-3.

The committee will meet next on June 5 at the Orange County Administration Center in the Board of County Commissioners Chambers. A map submitted for approval by Spears (his second) is currently being reviewed to ensure it complies with redistricting laws and will be discussed at the meeting. You can view the map here.