Georgia Republicans' move to redraw local voting maps raises cries of
power grabs
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[February 04, 2022]
By Nathan Layne
(Reuters) -Republican state lawmakers in
Georgia are pushing legislation to redraw electoral maps in three
counties in a move that would effectively override local officials who
have traditionally wielded that power in what has become a battleground
state.
Democrats and voting rights activists say the moves are norm-busting
power grabs for county commissioner seats that could significantly
impact governance in areas with large minority populations. Republicans
say they need to protect their constituents amid a period of intense
demographic change.
The legislative maneuvers in Gwinnett, Athens-Clarke and Cobb counties
all relate to the once-a-decade redistricting process in which local
officials typically redraw the maps for commissioners and the state
legislature approves them in a rubber-stamp vote. Commission chairs are
elected county-wide, while members, or commissioners, are elected by
district.
"What we are looking at is this idea that Republicans can use their
power at the state legislature to circumvent local control," said
Atlanta state Representative Bee Nguyen, a Democrat who is also a
candidate for secretary of state. "It is setting a new precedent that is
dangerous in nature."
The Republican lawmakers who have proposed their own maps in the bills
say the maps drawn up by local officials deny their voters a voice.
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The bills are the center of the latest battle over voting rights in a
state President Joe Biden won narrowly in 2020, a victory that prompted
Republicans to impose sweeping new ballot restrictions and make a flurry
of efforts to place county election boards in Republican hands.
Redistricting has always been a partisan exercise. But for decades,
lawmakers in Georgia have deferred to locally elected officials who most
reflect the will of their constituents - a norm that would be changed by
the bills moving their way through the state's Republican-controlled
House and Senate.
Gwinnett, Cobb and Athens-Clarke all have sizeable minority populations,
prompting allegations that the maneuvers are aimed at installing whites
or conservatives in county seats they otherwise could not win.
In Gwinnett, the state's second-most populous county, a Republican state
lawmaker this week submitted a map to replace one approved by its county
commissioners and local legislative delegation, both of which are
controlled by Democrats.
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![](../images/020421pics/news_d39.jpg)
Voters line up early in the morning to cast their ballots in the
U.S. Senate run-off election, at a polling station in Marietta,
Georgia, January 5, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Segar
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/04/images/ads/current/farmersbank_lda_LUAL_2021.png) The map proposed by Bonnie Rich, a
powerful House Republican who represents part of Gwinnett, would
create a district that is roughly half white in a county that has
undergone big population shifts and is now two-thirds Black,
Hispanic and Asian.
Rich, who is white, said her map was "compact" and "fairly
apportioned" and would keep communities in northern Gwinnett
together. She criticized the county commission's map, which made
minimal changes to the one drawn by Republicans a decade ago, before
Gwinnett flipped to Democratic control in 2016.
"They have ensured that my constituents will not have a voice at the
county level," Rich said during a House Governmental Affairs
Committee meeting on Tuesday.
The Georgia House passed Rich's map on Thursday, mostly along party
lines. The new map would require Marlene Fosque, the first Black
person elected to Gwinnett's board of commissioners, to move in
order to run for re-election this year.
A similar process is playing out in Cobb County, where Republican
legislators have filed their own maps for the education and
commissioner boards.
In Athens-Clarke, four Republicans are pushing ahead with a map that
renumbers districts in way that will prevent three Democratic
commissioners from running for re-election, and which goes against a
map approved by the county commission.
Yurij Rudensky, a redistricting counsel in the Brennan Center's
Democracy Program, said the Georgia events represent "signs of
extreme redistricting abuses" and could be traced to the 2013
Supreme Court ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act's provision
requiring former Confederate states to seek federal approval before
re-drawing voting districts.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Conn.Editing by Ross Colvin
and Matthew Lewis)
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