Redistricting 101

Aaron Gould Sheinin writes in the AJC:

--------------------

What it is

Redrawing elected officials’ districts is a process that occurs at least once every 10 years after the U.S. census.

--------------------

Why it matters

Few things are more important to elected officials. Even a minor shift in district lines can be the difference between easy re-election and getting tossed from office. For voters, it can mean a change in who represents their neighborhood. That can mean a switch in party representation or just a new face.

But it can also mean an area goes from being in the heart of a district to an outlier, which in turn can make it more difficult for its voice to be heard. For example, pretend City X is the population center of a state Senate district but that after redistricting City Y is now the population driver of the district: City X could have a harder time getting its needs met.

Make no mistake, the process is primarily a political one. This is the first post-census redistricting in Georgia controlled completely by Republicans, and they’ll try their best to build on their majority by drawing GOP-leaning districts or, conversely, eliminating Democratic-leaning ones, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist and expert on redistricting.

“The majority party certainly has the right to do what they want to do,” Bullock said, adding that Democrats did the same.

--------------------

How to get involved

Once the maps have been introduced, they will be posted to the redistricting committees’ website: /www1.legis.ga.gov/legis/2011_12/house/Committees/reapportionment/gahlcr.htm.

All committee meetings and sessions of the House and Senate are open to the public. Many committee meetings also stream live on the Internet, and daily meetings of the chambers also will be shown live online.

--------------------

Timeline

The session begins at 10 a.m. Monday. The first major committee meeting is scheduled for 2 p.m. Tuesday, when the House redistricting committee meets in Room 606 of the Coverdell Legislative Office Building, across the street from the Capitol. Top lawmakers and the governor have all vowed that the special session will be “short,” but there is no set end date.

--------------------

How it works

In six states, independent commissions are appointed to handle the process of drawing districts. In Georgia, however, the party that controls the General Assembly — this time it’s Republicans — gets to do it.

The GOP majority has hired staff — at taxpayer expense — who have crunched the census data and plugged it into the existing districts to show changes in population.

A series of public hearings were held across the state where voters gave lawmakers an earful but never had access to draft maps.

Those proposals were later drawn with sophisticated software that uses the census data to delineate boundaries. Then, one by one, lawmakers were brought in to look at the proposed draft for their own district and maybe that of a neighboring lawmaker.

Few people have seen draft maps for the entire state, and each lawmaker was allowed to request changes — but not all requests are granted, said Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, a veteran of two previous redistricting sessions.

Next, lawmakers will reveal the proposed maps to the public and then debate and vote on them in the special session that begins Monday.

Gov Nathan Deal, a fellow Republican, must sign off on the plans, too. And then, because Georgia is subject to the Voting Rights Act, the federal government — either the Justice Department or federal court in Washington — must also approve them.

--------------------

Terms to know

Cracking: Taking a group of like-minded voters and splitting them into multiple districts to dilute their voting strength. Courts have said this is a no-no.

Packing: Cramming like-minded voters into as few districts as possible in an effort to minimize the districts they can influence. Also something courts don’t like.

VAP: Short for voting-age population, that is the number of people age 18 or older in an area.

Deviation: Percentage of population by which districts are allowed to diverge from each other.

Gerrymandering: The drawing of irregular-shaped districts to benefit one party or group.

Retrogression: Change in a map or voting procedures that leaves a group with less voting strength than it had before. Retrogression can be challenged under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Sources: Georgia General Assembly, Brennan Center for Justice, U.S. Justice Department

--------------------

The law

The concept of “one-person, one-vote” requires that every district in a particular level of government have a nearly equal number of residents. For example, every Georgia House district should have roughly 54,000 people. To accomplish this, lines must be redrawn to reflect growth in certain areas or a loss of population in others. In Georgia, House and Senate redistricting committees adopted guidelines to follow that include the promise of honoring the one-person, one-vote principle.

Georgia law also requires districts to be contiguous, meaning all parts of the district must be adjacent. It also says mapmakers must preserve “communities of interest,” which are defined by the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based nonpartisan think tank, as “groups who likely have similar legislative concerns, and therefore would benefit from cohesive representation.

“These interests might include social, geographic, cultural, ethnic, racial, economic, religious, and/or political.”