New congressional and state Senate districts proposed Monday by a Senate committee would shake up representation in Southwest Florida, and apparently for the better for most of Lee County.

The snaking Senate District 27, which now stretches from Bonita Springs to West Palm Beach, would shrink to include Punta Gorda, Fort Myers and Bonita Springs, only extending as far east as Lehigh Acres, which appears to be in another district after viewing proposed maps.

The maps released Monday are among the first official steps in a process that will consume the 2012 legislative session and determine how Florida’s population will be represented in the state and federal government for the next 10 years.

After public comment on its proposed maps, the Senate Reapportionment Committee will vote to send the proposals to the full Senate on Dec. 6. The committee didn’t release a proposal for realigning the Florida House of Representatives.

“My first impression is very favorable,” said Tim Durham, chief deputy supervisor of elections in Collier County.

For months, Durham has been studying the county’s demographics and neighborhood geography, often scrutinizing down to the street or property line, in an effort to define practical voter districts. Durham and other officials diced the county into blocks, called “voter tabulation districts,” that attempt to keep communities whole.

Collier and other Florida counties submitted those blocks to legislative redistricting committees.

After looking at the congressional redistricting plan Monday, Durham said, “they followed those really nicely. … We’re going to have very few precincts that are divided arbitrarily within voter precinct lines.”

For voters, that means most people’s ballots will look like their neighbors’ ballots. For the county’s election officials, it means fewer ballot variations at any one polling place.

Politically, the proposed map should satisfy Rep. Trudi Williams, R-Fort Myers, who is running for Senate District 27 against Republican incumbent Lizbeth Benacquisto.

Williams, who is a member of the Senate Redistricting Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, has vowed to slice districts like 27 that span from coast to coast. Such districts have received public criticism because they force common representation for communities with widely different concerns.

“I don’t think bi-coastal districts work for anyone,” Williams said in September.

She couldn’t be reached Monday evening.

The maps, which can be viewed at flsenate.gov, come after a public review of 156 proposed configurations and dozens of hearings across the state to gather comments. Every 10 years, coinciding with new U.S. Census data, the state Legislature painstakingly redraws the district lines to accommodate population and demographic changes.

For the upcoming legislative session, legislators are required to adhere to two voter amendments to the state constitution that prevent party favoritism and mandate that districts be as compact as possible. Additionally, the Voting Rights Act forces lawmakers to create a district with a majority of racial or language minorities. Under the maps proposed Monday, that congressional district would be in Central Florida.

Already, Florida Democrats have taken fire at the Senate committee’s proposal, accusing Republicans of gerrymandering the districts to maintain GOP seats, despite the voter amendments prohibiting it.

“Today, Florida Republicans have taken a state – which experts have long considered one of the most malapportioned states in the country – and worsened it,” Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith said in a statement.

Counterpart committees in the state House are expected to release their map proposals this week.