So how about this job description? Long hours, low pay, dozens if not hundreds/thousands of supervisors. Area of responsibility, as yet undetermined...and you may not know your territory until AFTER you are hired. Sound tempting?
Welcome to the wonderful world of re-districting and political district map-making. Having worked under Georgia’s Gold Dome, and later Capitol Hill during times of Democratic and Republican majorities, I have witnessed both Team Red and Team Blue skewing district maps in their favor following U.S. Census results and during re-districting.
In 1991, a solid Democratic majority in the Georgia General Assembly drew a map for the new 11th Congressional District that looked like a Rorschach ink blot straddling I-20, reaching from Decatur, Georgia to Savannah.
State Rep. Cynthia McKinney won that new 11th Congressional District, which had a 64% African-American majority when she was elected in 1992 as the first African-American woman to represent Georgia in Congress. McKinney was re-elected in 1994. Several constituents of McKinney's new district, previously in several other districts challenged that new map in court, and during 1995 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Johnson that the district boundaries were unconstitutional gerrymandering because the new boundaries were drawn primarily focused on the racial composition of the constituents of the new district.
A special session of the Georgia General Assembly re-drew the congressional district maps, and Rep. McKinney's district was subsequently renumbered the 4th District taking in most all of DeKalb County, GA. Though Ms. McKinney protested the new map and district, which had a nearly identical racial demographic composition, she won easy re-election in 1996, 1998, and 2000. She would lose her seat during the Democratic Primary in 2002.
I said at that time, and I will echo again here, just because a political party is in the majority and CAN DO SOMETHING to its benefit, does NOT MEAN that it should.
Pursue an ideological agenda consistent with your majority party, certainly. Promote candidates and statewide office holders who match your majority and core beliefs, no question. But use household and even precinct-level data on prior voting patterns and age/race/gender demographics in an attempt to draw customized political districts at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels to maintain or grow your power base, or artificially hang on to power. Certainly NOT.
There are currently as many as THREE sets of maps which current members of the Georgia General Assembly and Georgia's Congressional Delegation, as well as potential candidates for the same need to make themselves continually aware of -
1. Maps drawn by the Georgia General Assembly during the 2022 General Assembly, subsequently set aside by U.S. District Court Judge Steve Jones. Jones ruled that the State House, State Senate, and Congressional district maps violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered new maps. However the state is currently appealing that ruling, and these are the maps which the current legislators and members of Congress now live in.
2. New maps just completed by the Georgia General Assembly Reapportionment Committee, passed by the Georgia General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp, now under review by Judge Jones and if approved, go into effect in time for qualifying for 2024 elections during the upcoming 2024 General Assembly. These new maps place several Democratic incumbents in the General Assembly within the same district, potentially create one more majority/minority Congressional District, and likely will maintain GOP majorities in both chambers, while either pitting several incumbent, primarily white Democratic members against each other, or drawing maps placing them outside of their existing districts.
3. Should Judge Jones rule that these new maps do not follow the directions of his order, a Special Master may be appointed, elections would be held based on the old maps, and a third set of maps would be drawn by a trio of judges, without attention being paid to partisan preferences.
The GOP has the keys and majority now in Georgia. PLEASE consider, whichever party is charged with drawing District Maps in 2031 after the next census, give priority to existing municipal and county borders, and communities of like interest. When the focus is drawing maps to guide or help guarantee a political outcome, versus offering choices and winning on the battlefield of ideas...we are losing our way.
Maps drawn to guarantee extreme majorities often instead guarantee extremist officeholders, further divided government, and a less than adequate result for the people they are all intended to serve. Put that in your district GPS mapmaker.
