Georgia’s political maps are set to be redrawn. What do Columbus residents want?
A majority of speakers at Wednesday’s Joint Reapportionment Committee public hearing pleaded with state lawmakers for transparency and political districts that reflect the Columbus area’s diversity months before the Georgia legislature is set to redraw district boundaries for Congress, the state house and the state senate.
The July meeting was one of 11 scheduled sessions to take place around the state this summer ahead of the once-in-a-decade process.
By law, the state’s political maps must be redrawn every 10 years based on U.S. Census data to account for population changes. Republicans will seek to draw maps that keep their majority control over the state legislature for the next decade, and Democrats will seek to stop it. The process has been further complicated by Census data delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Georgia did not gain or lose any congressional districts in the latest tally, leaving its number of seats in the U.S. House at 14. However, population increases mean more residents within the state’s political districts.
According to documents prepared by the state senate and house media offices, the ideal congressional district in Georgia would hold 765,136 people, an increase of 73,161. Each state senate district would hold 191,284 people, and an ideal state house district would hold 59,511 residents.
The work starts with the house and senate committees. There are 14 members of the Senate Committee on Reapportionment and Redistricting, including Columbus’ Ed Harbison. There are 17 members on the House Committee on Legislative and Congressional Reapportionment, including Columbus’ Richard Smith.
Here’s what happened Wednesday night and what’s next in the process.
‘Fairness and Equality’
Many speakers during the roughly two-hour event called for lawmakers to craft districts that would fairly represent Black, Latino and Asian voters instead of lines and boundaries meant to benefit a particular candidate or political party.
Representatives from the Georgia ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), voting rights nonprofit Fair Count and Columbus-based My Black Has a Purpose were among those who spoke.
Representatives for the ACLU and SPLC both mentioned that hearings and forms associated with the process were held only in English, leaving out “more than 100,000 Georgians with limited English proficiency,” said SPLC’s Poy Winichakul.
ACLU policy analyst Nicole Robinson told lawmakers that Columbus area counties became more diverse in the last ten years.
The Black voting-age population increased by 11%. The Hispanic voting-age population increased by over 20%, and the Asian voting population increased by almost 26%. Overall population increased by 3% in Chattahoochee, Harris, Marion, Muscogee, Stewart and Talbot counties combined.
“You want to make sure things don’t happen to purposefully disenfranchise a group,” Arreasha Z. Lawrence with My Black Has a Purpose told the Ledger-Enquirer.
Others called for transparency in the process, including a full release of draft maps, data and algorithms for public review before the state legislature votes on the new maps.
“The pattern that Georgia has used, and a lot of other states have, is they have done it almost in secrecy,” said 80-year-old DeKalb County resident Margaret Blackmon, who made the two-hour drive for Wednesday’s hearing. “The biggest problem, I think, is the splitting of small cities.”
Columbus in Congress
Several speakers addressed their desires for Columbus’ placement within the state’s congressional districts. Currently, much of the city sits within Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop’s 2nd District. Portions of midtown up through northern Columbus and its suburbs belong to Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson’s 3rd District.
Bishop’s 2nd District, which covers southwest Georgia and portions of Columbus and Macon, will almost certainly have to grow, Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, told Georgia Public Broadcasting back in December.
Alton Russell, chair of the Muscogee County Republican Party offered a possible solution: moving all of Muscogee, Harris and Meriwether counties into the 2nd District.
“The second can’t move anywhere but north,” he said.
Former state Senate candidate Teddy Reese objected to Russell’s suggestion of adding Harris and Meriwether — both counties carried by former President Donald Trump in 2020 — to the 2nd District.
“The second congressional district is a unique district that represents many of the rural counties that you heard about today,” he said. “We need to keep the rural unity of that district.”
What’s next?
U.S. Census data needed for redistricting is expected to be released next month, with complete data available by September. Typically, that data is received in March, lawmakers said.
After the data is received, Gov. Brian Kemp will convene a special assembly to approve the maps. That meeting will likely come in the late fall. In March 2022, candidates for public office will use the new maps for qualifying.
When asked if the public would see draft maps before the final vote is taken, Sen. John F. Kennedy, a Macon Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Reapportionment and Redistricting, said he did not know.
One of the reasons the meetings are being held now is to make sure lawmakers have time to collect feedback and include it in the new maps, he said.
“We are on such a compressed time frame this year relative to years past,” Kennedy said.
This story was originally published July 30, 2021 at 6:00 AM.