Florida Governor Rick Scott has withdrawn a submission to the DOJ of new redistricting rules.  This story seems to miss the possibilities.  It notes  –  “earlier this month, new Gov. Rick Scott sent a letter to DOJ withdrawing the request for preclearance of the Florida plan.”

Here are a couple of possibilities.  Perhaps Governor Scott recognized what this website has been saying for months – submit your plans directly to federal court and by-pass the DOJ.  Georgia did it.  Maybe Florida is doing it too.  States can avoid the secretive DOJ administrative approval process by going straight to an unbiased federal judge.  Hopefully that’s what Rick Scott is up to.

Another interesting possibility is, what if nothing requires Rick Scott to submit the plan?  What if no Florida statute requires the Governor to actually submit changes?  Section 5 can function in a peculiar way.  If there is a law with which an executive disagrees, the executive can simply refuse to submit the law to the DOJ (or to the federal court) and if there is no legal remedy (or obligation) under state law, it would seem that the law would never take effect.  If no state law compels an executive to submit the plan for preclearance, how could a mandamus lie against the executive. A strange quirky possibility indeed.  Is this what Rick Scott is up to?  If so, he must have some pretty saving Voting Rights lawyers down there.  Time will tell.