Cecile Scoon, who was elected in June as president of the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Florida, visited Tampa on Friday as part of her outreach to LWV chapters around the state.

A major issue that the League of Women Voters is monitoring is the once every decade reapportionment process that formally began in committee meetings this past week in Tallahassee. The League was one of several groups who successfully sued the Legislature for violating the state’s “Fair Districts” constitutional amendments after the last redistricting took place a decade ago.

Senate Reapportionment Chairman Ray Rodrigues has said that he will soon decide on whether public meetings on redistricting will be held outside of Tallahassee, but added this comment, as reported by the News Service of Florida.

“The pieces of information that came out of that traveling roadshow were communities of interest, that is where the public came to us and said, ‘Here are the communities of interest that you need to keep together,’ …If you go back and look at the litigation from the last cycle, the court was very clear that we're no longer allowed to use communities of interest because that was not articulated in the Fair Districts amendment.”

Scoon said the League was “very concerned about” public meetings not taking place across Florida.

“We think that it’s part of our civic duties and responsibilities for persons to be able to have direct communications with their legislators,” she told Spectrum Bay News 9, adding that it was “empowering” for her as a citizen to have a direct conversation with Rodrigues when she addressed the committee in person on Monday.

"We had a dialogue and, even though we may not have agreed, it was very empowering for me as a citizen to be able to have my voice heard in the moment – have a response and discussion, and I think that kind of give and take is very, very important,” she said.

Scoon says she’d be okay even if such meetings were held on Zoom – but believes that the public needs to be able to give direct feedback to lawmakers.

“You want feedback in the moment so that you can have a conversation,” she adds.

Another issue at the top of Scoon’s agenda is to inform members about election law changes that went into effect earlier this year that place restrictions on the collection of vote-by-mail ballots and the use of drop boxes – restrictions that the League has gone to court to try to stop.

“We don’t agree with many of the changes but we want people to be able to know what the changes are so we can abide by the law, and if we can get something changed, we’ll let them know about that, too,” she said.

Scoon says what’s particularly objectionable in SB 90 is the provision that requires that drop boxes be staffed by election workers, which she says will disproportionately affect people who don’t work a regular 9-5 schedule or work more than one job. “It will have a very big impact on shift workers,” she says, adding that such workers are disproportionately people of color.

Scoon is a civil rights and employment discrimination attorney in Panama City. She spent five years as an active duty Air Force JAG prosecuting in military courts-martial, and retired from the Air Force Reserves as a Major in 2005.

Deborah Kauffman, the president of the League of Women Voters of Hillsborough County, says that her chapter will be holding several events planned next week around National Voter Registration day, since “that is kind of our fundamental mission.” She added that the Hillsborough Chapter is also focused on other issues like gun safety and health care, and are now looking deeper at reproductive rights and affordable housing.