What’s supposed to be a once-a-decade event is about to happen for the third time in Georgia since 2020, and the results could shape state politics for years.
The Georgia Legislature is set to gavel in for a special legislative session Wednesday immediately on the heels of Tuesday’s runoff election, in part to redraw its boundaries for congressional and state legislative elections following a U.S. Supreme Court decision undoing a key part of the Voting Rights Act. The new boundaries are set to go into effect for the 2028 election.
Lawmakers previously met to redraw maps in 2021 following the 2020 census and again in 2023 after a federal judge ruled those maps violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the state to create one congressional and seven legislative districts where Black residents make up the majority. The legal battle over the 2023 boundary lines is still pending in federal court.
As of Monday, no proposed plans had been released ahead of this week’s special session.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Jon Burns’ office said information on the schedule will be coming this week and a public input portal will be available online when the redistricting process starts. A spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ office said citizens can engage and participate by watching the General Assembly via livestream and can access committee schedules on the General Assembly’s website once they are posted.
But lawmakers from both parties interviewed last week said they haven’t seen any draft plans and aren’t sure how long the session might last, and the lack of solid information is fueling speculation of how far state leadership might try to go with redrawing the maps.
State Sen. Nikki Merritt, a Grayson Democrat who leads the state’s Black legislative caucus, said she fears any of the state’s Black lawmakers could be drawn out of their district or placed into unfriendly territory.
“I’m bracing for the worst,” she said. “I mean, my mom just asked me today, is your seat in jeopardy? I have many of our colleagues in the Black caucus and the minority chamber that are asking the same question. And the truth is, I tell people, there are 75 Black legislators between the House and the Senate. My caution and my warning to everyone is, we’re all at risk, all of us. So be prepared. We haven’t seen anything, but be prepared for the worst.”
Will GOP leaders try to maximize potential gains?
One option for Republican-led state leadership would be to grab as much advantage as possible at a time when Republicans are at risk of losing control of the U.S. House.
On the congressional level, the likeliest target is Democratic Congressman Sanford Bishop in southwest Georgia’s 2nd District, which is surrounded by Republican districts.
In Georgia, like much of the United States, voting patterns heavily correlate with race, and a map targeting Bishop could move Black, Democratic-voting residents into the 8th District, represented by Republican Congressman Austin Scott of Tifton, while moving some of Scott’s white, conservative voters into the 2nd.
A maximalist approach might also target one of the Democratic-leaning seats in metro Atlanta, potentially by shifting Democratic voters into the 14th District, currently represented by Republican Congressman Clay Fuller.
That’s the scenario Fenika Miller, national field director with Black Voters Matter, is dreading.
“We know that post-Louisiana v. Callais, states across the South have moved quickly in a coordinated effort to roll back Black voting rights, and we’re concerned that that same thing will happen here in the state of Georgia, potentially wiping out two congressional districts and up to 26 legislative seats where Black and Latino Georgians have the power to elect our own representatives.”
Miller said she views the session as the latest in a long history of white Georgia leaders clawing back power from Black voters when they start to threaten the party in power.
“It’s bigger than just the lines on the map,” she said. “It’s about all the things that political power gets you that Black and brown communities have been kept on the margins of.”
“It has everything to do with who gets healthcare, SNAP benefits, what our farmers do, just our basic quality of life, housing rights,” she added. “Representation is tied to resources and how those are moved, particularly when we talk about communities that have been under-represented, under-resourced, under-invested.”
However long the session might last, Miller said lawmakers should expect protests every day. She said organizers are training locals on how to testify at committee hearings and will be collecting testimony from Georgians from the 2nd District and others who can’t make the trip to Atlanta.
“We expect folks to be on Liberty Plaza every day. We want to be able to pack the Capitol every single day,” she said.
Democrats are also planning to learn from their colleagues across state lines. In a crowded dining room at Paschal’s Restaurant & Bar in downtown Atlanta, which once served as a meeting place for civil rights icons like Congressman John Lewis and the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Democratic state legislators from across the South gathered Monday to introduce a new partnership intended to strengthen voting rights and protect democracy.
Turning to the immediate task at hand, House Minority Leader Carolyn Hugley said Georgia Democrats would be working to force Republicans to be transparent about any redistricting decisions they make.
“We are here prepared to do what legislators do, we’re going to engage in this process,” Hugley said Monday. “We’re going to challenge every step of the way, because this is SEC country and people don’t like cheaters, and that is all that we’re going to see.”
Sizing up the political risks for Georgia Republicans
But Georgia leaders could also decide a light touch is the better approach.
“There’s a saying about redistricting, and it applies to racial as well as partisan redistricting, ‘pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered,’” said University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock. “Meaning that if you become too aggressive, then it can blow up in your face.”
Adding voters to one district means subtracting them from another, and if you base your math on how the numbers look during good times, it may come back to haunt you in lean times.
When lawmakers from one party draw maps that inadvertently benefit the other party, it’s colloquially known as a “dummymander.”
Bishop’s district may be a safe target for Republicans, but going after a metro Atlanta seat could be riskier, Bullock said. While the 14th District could accommodate more Democrats, packing other north metro districts like the 7th and 11th could put Republicans at risk of a dummymander, he said.
“Those are ones which are probably inching towards Democrats anyway, so Republicans, unless they get really greedy, I think they would impose some self-constraints on what they could do,” Bullock said. “They’re not trying to just maximize what they might be able to squeeze out for 2028, figuring that it might cause them problems, say, in 2030.”
Some GOP incumbents may also have little appetite to redraw the state Legislature’s lines. Doing so could mean reducing their share of white, conservative voters to help their more vulnerable colleagues.
“Most legislators are happy with the district that has elected them,” Bullock said. “So ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ would be their attitude. Now, those who might welcome some help would be those who are in a marginal district and they have the sense that their district is becoming yet more Democratic.”
But the unusual fact that the maps passed in this session will not go into effect for the current election cycle could create awkward situations for those vulnerable incumbents, said State Rep. David Wilkerson, a Powder Springs Democrat.
“You have a lot of vulnerable Republicans who are running for election that are basically going to have to spend the next four and a half months telling voters in their current district, ‘Hey, look, I want you to vote for me now, but I don’t want to see you in my district in ‘28,’” he said. “They need to convince somebody to vote for them when they’re drawing them out of their district. That’s the strangest proposition.”
Merritt said Democrats in the chambers will do their best during the session to remind Republicans about the other potential political costs of overstepping.
“That is something that we should continue to have conversations with our colleagues on the other side about,” she said. “Like, ‘Hey, you guys, you’re going to take a really big political risk here at this time. Elections are in November.
“Do you really want to poke the bear to get more Black voters out if you pass a map that attacks their representation?’”
Reporter Maya Homan contributed to this story. Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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