State and federal political boundaries in Georgia and all other states must be adjusted every decade based on census data. That is why General Assembly committees in charge of redistricting have scheduled a joint virtual town hall meeting on June 15th to gather feedback, discuss the process and plan for statewide hearings.
Earlier this year a terse announcement from a Census Bureau official said that the data needed to draw maps to reconfigure some of Georgia’s congressional and legislative posts won’t arrive at least until July 30th. That led House Speaker David Ralston to speculate recently that the adjustment of boundaries due to population shifts won’t take place until the fall when “the frost is on the pumpkin.”
What does all this mean politically? To take one example, around 570,000 people should reside in a congressional district. Georgia has 12 of them. And those districts are drawn in Georgia by the political party that controls the legislature to have an approximately equal number of people within the borders of each.
There are some congressional and state legislative districts, of course, that have grown faster than Georgia as a whole and have more people than ideal. And some districts have lost population. All this means that GOP-controlled state House and Senate reapportionment committees are already thinking about the map-drawing work ahead of them.
There are also population shifts in city council, county commission and school board districts that must be addressed at the local level.
But back to the U.S. Congress. Georgia is neither gaining nor losing seats in that body. But expect GOP map drawers to reconfigure lines relating to the suburban Atlanta 6th and 7th U.S. Congressional districts that are currently represented by Democrats. The map drawers will seek to move around Republican voter neighborhoods into one of those districts in order to hopefully win a seat in 2022. (InsiderAdvantage is hearing that GOP leaders are looking at ensuring the 7th District be more Republican oriented by adding friendly northern precincts.)
Finally, Republicans will look at tweaking the southwest/middle Georgia 2nd Congressional District held by Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany. There may be enough rural white Republican voters that can be added to the district to help Bishop, should he run again next year, be defeated.
