Georgia lawmakers rush toward deadline for new voting maps

With just four days remaining until the deadline for Georgia’s legislature to submit new voting maps to a federal judge, Republican and Democratic lawmakers meeting in Atlanta traded accusations over whether the GOP plans will pass legal muster.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ordered the General Assembly to redraw Georgia’s electoral maps, saying that the state had diluted Black voting power in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

On Friday, two days after lawmakers convened in a 10-day special session called by Gov. Brian Kemp, the GOP-controlled House and Senate voted, over Democratic objections, to approve the plans drawn up by special drafting committees. The chambers swapped the plans on Monday, giving their counterparts a chance to examine their plans and tweak them.

Speaking on the House floor on Friday, Republican Rep. Rob Leverett of Elberton, chairman of the reapportionment and redistricting committee, said the House’s plan “fully complies” with Jones’ order to draw five additional Black-majority districts in the House and two additional Black-majority districts in the Senate to mirror increases in Georgia’s Black population in the last decade.

Rep. Sam Park of Lawrenceville, whip of the House Democratic caucus, disagreed.

He said that the House Republican map proposes five new majority Black districts but takes away two other majority minority ones, for a net of only three additional majority minority districts.

That House proposal “violates the spirit of the Voting Rights Act, and we believe it probably violates the letter of the law, as well,” Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook of Savannah later said.

The Republican-drawn maps provide for no additional Black representation in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Georgia’s delegation boasts nine Republicans and five Democrats.

The boundaries of U.S. House District 1, the Coastal Georgia seat currently held by Republican U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter, remain unchanged, with the number of Black voters in the district still 28.2%.

Let the courts decide

As the clock winds down towards the court’s deadline, there appears to be little incentive for either side to bend, especially with members of both the state House and Senate all up for reelection next November.

Instead, lawmakers from both parties appear to be betting that the courts will do their work for them. In the case of the Democrats, that means that Jones will rule the maps inadequate and appoint a special master to do the job. “It is a map that Judge Jones can and should reject,” Park said.

As for Republicans, reliance on the courts means trusting that any maps produced by Jones and his special master won’t survive a challenge in 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, where conservative judges appointed by former President Donald Trump hold sway.  

The Tide brings news and observations from The Current’s staff.