Voting rights advocate: Whiplash redistricting process gerrymanders Georgia in GOP's favor
This is an op-ed by Rebecca Rolfes, a past president of the League of Women Voters of Coastal Georgia, a chapter of the 101-year old voting rights organization
Well, that was fast.
The U.S. Census was rushed by the pandemic which meant that states had six to eight weeks to redraw electoral district lines instead of the usual six to eight months. That was nothing compared to the whiplash speed with which the Georgia Legislature passed new maps that will determine where we vote, who we can vote for and, as far as humanly possible, who will win for the next 10 years.
Let me say that again: these maps determine who will win before we even have candidates.
That was the blunt intent of the Republicans controlling both chambers of the legislature. They have drawn maps that all but guarantee their continuing dominance in state politics.
Letters to the editor: Readers label Georgia redistricting process as gerrymandering
More on redistricting: Savannah's Georgia House legislators face new challenges after redistricting
Throughout the expedited timeline, organizations and individuals at 11 town halls around the state demanded fairness and transparency. Instead, what they got was lip service and not much of that. The public could comment but not ask questions. The public portal received thousands of comments, all of which were supposedly read but not responded to. The maps were held back until the eleventh hour in all cases. In one case, maps were released after the public hearing.
New maps for the Georgia Senate passed out of committee, through the full legislature and were on the governor’s desk for signature in under 14 hours of hearings. House maps took only slightly longer. That’s 56 Senate districts and 180 House districts rammed through in under two weeks.
The Princeton Gerrymandering Project drew a million maps based on Georgia’s census data in order to find the best in terms of fairness, competitiveness and minority representation. They rated the Senate maps an F. The House maps got a B but could still be better. The map for the U.S. Congress received a barely passing grade of C.
Georgia’s population grew by a million people over the last decade, all of that from people of color. These maps create no new majority-minority districts, subtract some that were there, and crack and pack communities of color in order to dilute the power of their vote. Lawsuits are likely.
The only Asian-American woman in the Georgia Senate, from Johns Creek with its fast-growing Asian population, will find it very difficult to win re-election now that significant numbers of white voters from Forsyth County are in her district.
U.S. Representative Lucy McBath will have an even tougher time given that lines were drawn to exclude 355,000 Democratic-leaning voters and include 355,000 Republican-leaning voters in her district northwest of Atlanta. Late Monday afternoon, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that McBath was considering running in a neighboring district more friendly to Democrats in 2022. That means she will face a Democratic incumbent, Carolyn Bordeaux.
Over and over members of the two committees pointed back to the egregiously gerrymandered districts the Democrats drew when they were in power. But that was 20 years ago. It wasn’t right then, and it isn’t right now.
Georgia is more populous, more diverse and more purple than it’s ever been. Instead of acknowledging those changes and representing the interests of all of us who vote and pay taxes in this state, the majority in the Georgia General Assembly focused solely on clinging to power.
We spoke and they didn’t listen. We will now have to take our votes to more responsive candidates interested in actually serving the public good.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Opinion: Georgia legislature's rush to redistrict creates unfair maps
