GOP Floats Redistricting Plan Tuesday afternoon.

The AP is reporting:

Statehouse Republicans began a move to reshape Georgia’s congressional map on Tuesday, with House leaders floating a plan that retools districts the GOP has criticized for years.

The new map, which must be approved by the Legislature, makes the 13 districts much more compact. It could also lead to more Republicans in Congress.

“This is what we’ve been saying all along, that (districts) need to be fair, with contiguous districts and no bizarre shapes,” said Republican Rep. Bobby Franklin, chairman of the Reapportionment Committee.

Franklin’s map, to be introduced to the full House Wednesday, comes alongside a Republican attempt to set rules for future redistricting efforts. Franklin’s committee approved those rules 4-3 Tuesday, strictly along party lines.

The resolution specifies that districts should be compact and avoid bizarre, politically driven shapes.

The current maps were drawn in 2001 when Democrats controlled the statehouse. They acknowledged that they designed the districts to help them elect more Democrats to Congress.

“It protects them, as a minority, that we can’t do to them what they did to us,” Franklin said.

Currently, the state has seven Republican and six Democratic members of Congress.

With both houses of the Legislature now under GOP control, some Republican congressmen are pressing state lawmakers to change the map, hoping that will make their next election campaigns easier.

Franklin’s map, which he said wasn’t influenced by congressman or other Republican higher-ups, tightens east Georgia’s 12th District, which currently stretches from Athens to Savannah.

Currently held by Athens Democrat John Barrow, the district would lose half of Clarke County and all of Savannah and take in Republican-leaning suburbs around Augusta.

The oddly shaped 13th District, in south metro Atlanta, would be tightened to include all of Henry, Newton, Clayton, Butts, Spalding and Jasper counties.

Democratic Rep. David Scott currently holds the 13th District seat.

And incumbent Rep. Jim Marshall, a Macon Democrat, would apparently be placed in the same district as Republican incumbent Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, of Sharpsburg.

The new district would lose more than a dozen of the southeast and central Georgia counties Marshall now represents, replacing them with south metro Atlanta turf where Westmoreland currently serves.

Senate Republicans were expected to make an announcement regarding redistricting Tuesday afternoon. Several Democrats were unable to be reached immediately for comment.