TALLAHASSEE — After more than two years of bickering over reforms meant to curb political abuses, the Florida Senate on Tuesday plans to debate maps for congressional and legislative districts that preserve Republican majorities and, its authors say, meet legal muster with Fair Districts.

But it will be far from the final word.

Already, voter-rights groups, including the League of Women Voters, Common Cause and Democracia, are laying the groundwork to challenge the Senate and congressional maps in court once the Legislature passes them.

Florida Democrats have also weighed in with maps that would create more districts favoring their candidates, while doing so at the possible expense of a handful of the black seats that helped the GOP gain legislative majorities in the 1990s.

With no hope of passing either plan through the Republican-dominated Legislature, the target audience for both plans is the judiciary.

"This is not a beauty contest between maps. In court, we have to show there were alternatives, there are alternatives, and this is a way you could comply. We think we did that," said Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith.

"It was very clear to us they were never going to pass a map that did anything other than protect incumbents and cement past partisan advantage."

Likewise, Dan Gelber, a former legislator and general counsel for Fair Districts Now, said his membership submitted maps last week "to give the Legislature an opportunity to pass a map that complies with the criteria" of amendments 5 and 6.

But Republicans in charge of redistricting have fired back at the "cynical litigation strategy" by arguing the new maps disenfranchise black voters and that the deadline for public maps passed more than two months ago.

"I think it's curious that maps pulled like rabbits out of a hat at the very end of the process would be offered 64 days after the deadline … and six months after the first of 28 requests," said Senate Reapportionment Chairman Don Gaetz, R-Niceville.

By and large, the GOP-drawn and alternative maps share important similarities: all would create a new Central Florida congressional district likely to elect a Hispanic and draw districts that would likely add only a handful of Democrats to the state's congressional delegation (now split 19-to-6 Republican) and Senate (now 28-to-12 Republican.)

But Democrats say that spreading their voters over more districts will make them more competitive in the future.

Timing is everything in redistricting because the maps need to be finished by the time candidate qualifying begins June 4.

The U.S. Justice Department will have 60 days to review both legislative and congressional plans once adopted. Florida's legislative maps must be reviewed first by the Florida Supreme Court. While the congressional plans go straight to DOJ once Gov. Rick Scott signs them, a legal challenge to Amendment 6 on a federal appeals court fast-track could change the rules before House and Senate negotiators hammer out their final differences in February.

So, critics will have several venues for making their case — that the maps, while on the surface appearing to adhere to the Fair Districts directives of drawing seats more compactly and protecting minorities, still intentionally advantage the party in power.

Both amendments 5 and 6, adopted in 2010 by 63 percent of Florida voters, ban lawmakers from drawing maps that have the "intent or effect" of diminishing voting rights or show "intent" to aiding incumbents or political parties.

"Intent" will be the operative word, because critics of the plans will need to demonstrate in court that the Legislature knowingly developed maps that favored their own incumbents or parties. The GOP will argue the Democratic alternative does the same thing.

An Orlando Sentinel analysis suggests the Republican-drawn maps for Senate seats and congressional districts that the Senate will debate Tuesday would advantage the GOP in future elections. But the authors argue that is unavoidable, given where people live.

In fact, the differences Tuesday would be minimal.

The GOP maps would raise the number of state Senate seats with Republican voter majorities from 21 to 22. Similarly, Scott carried 25 of the current districts in 2010, and would take 26 of the new ones. In 2008, a big Democratic turnout powered Barack Obama to a 20-20 split with Republican John McCain; McCain would have won 24 of the proposed seats.

The Democratic maps filed last week by Senate Minority Leader Nan Rich, D-Weston, would create an even 20-20 registration split. Scott would have won just 23 districts and McCain 21.

The same is true of the congressional maps. In the GOP majority maps, Republicans outnumber Democrats in 14 of 27 districts; the Democrat version would reverse that. Scott would have won 16 districts under the GOP plan and 15 under the Democratic one. And McCain would have carried 16 seats under the GOP plan, to 13 under the Democratic alternative.

Both versions create a new Hispanic-leaning congressional seat in Orange, Osceola and Polk counties, while rendering the seat of U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, more Democratic. But the Democratic map designs a Hispanic seat in Orlando without making all the surrounding GOP districts safer, as the Republican version does.

Instead of the 26 seats Scott would win under the majority-proposed map, he would capture 23 under the Democratic version. And instead of giving McCain 24 seats, the Democratic alternative would create 21 seats that would have gone for the GOP presidential ticket.

The Democratic maps achieve more partisan parity at the expense of black incumbents in at least two seats: the state Senate district currently held by Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami, and the congressional district of Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville.

Brown is fighting Amendment 6 in a federal appeals court — with the financial support of the Florida House.

The Democratic map would re-shape her nine-county seat to take in more of Jacksonville and end just south of Gainesville instead of meandering south to Orlando, as it does in both the current map and the GOP-favored proposal. The percentage of black voters would fall from 49.8 percent to 36.2 percent.

Similarly, Bullard's district, which runs north from Key West along western Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, would see its black voters drop from 29 percent to 20 percent in the Democratic map, while Latino voters would remain at 43 percent. The Republican-favored map boosts blacks to 35 percent and lowers Hispanic numbers to 40 percent.

Bullard is term-limited and her son, Rep. Dwight Bullard, D-Miami, is expected to run for her seat. Last week, she objected that the Democratic map would diminish black voting strength. Republicans joined in, and by the end of last week, Rich had decided not to bring the maps up for a floor vote Tuesday.

Smith said Bullard's seat was never a "protected" district and their map reflected the reality that Hispanics have become a larger voting bloc in western Miami-Dade County than blacks. He argues the Fair Districts amendments did not create an iron-clad linkage to preserve the same exact minority numbers in the legislature, just that "voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice."

The majority-drawn Senate map "cements a permanent Republican majority at 24, and every incumbent that is up for re-election has a stronger seat than the one they have now. Their answer to that is it just turned out that way," Smith said.

But Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland, said the Democratic map "sacrifices minorities for the purposes of getting a political advantage, and amendments 5 and 6 prohibit that.

"How in the world can they stand before a judge and say they haven't diminished minority voting rights?"

adeslatte@tribune.com or 850-222-5564.