Well Republicans are continuing their campaign against tradition. In Georgia, the Republicans, who are in power for the first time since reconstruction, have begun a process of redrawing the states 13 congressional districts. Unlike in Texas, Georgia’s districts were drawn by the legislature and have passed a court challenge.
The districts are horribly drawn, but that is not the point.
Georgia Republicans are spitting at tradition by redistricting between censuses. This sets a bad precedence for redistricting whenever the political power changes in Atlanta. If the Democrats manage to regain power in two or four years from now then they will have every right to redraw the districts again to their liking. Heck if the Republicans go down this road, nothing is to prevent the legislature from redrawing districts every two years to accommodate the wishes of new legislators.
The Republican claim to be taking the politics out of drawing Georgia’s congressional districts, but redistricting between censuses will introduces more politics into the procedure than the Democrats ever did.
The maps proposed by the Republicans sound wonderful. I live in the smallest county in the state, yet the GA House still managed to propose to split it into two separate congressional districts. The GA Senate keeps the county intact, but places it on the edge of a district stretching from Tennessee and South Carolina. The problem that my county has with the current map is that we do not have a congressional district centered on us even though we are the fifth largest urban area in the state. Neither of these maps solves our problem.
