Georgia 2020 Redistricting Discussion

[patzer]

Its hard to keep track of all the cases, but these are the two legislative-only suits which were consolidated to the Pendergrass Congressional suit. These were the cases that solely concerned Section 2 and no 14th Amendment racial gerrymandering claims (6th radical change), asked for a PI, failed, and then got stalled waiting for Milligan. There was notice of a accelerated schedule since Milligan, this is that.

The one with Racial Gerrymandering 14th Amendment claims is Georgia State Conference of the NAACP v. Georgia which is consolidated with Common Cause v. Raffensperger. They remain on prior schedule for the late fall, but may similarly be accelerated since additional briefing was requested in light of Milligan.

Interesting, there's a chance of the maps of Georgia's state house/senate being struck down? That would be very good news for the Democrats if so.

[patzer]

One thing the Alabama situation is making me wonder: suppose, for the sake of argument, the courts rule that 4 Black districts are necessary in Atlanta. What happens then? Would Clyde and possibly Collins be cool with significantly weakening their districts to preserve the gerrymander? Would the GAGOP even consider punting to the courts like Alabama is right now? It's one thing in Alabama because the rest of the state is so red, but you've got to imagine that a special master remap of Atlanta could get dicey fast.

The difference between Georgia and Alabama is that in Alabama there's no chance of courts drawing a map any worse for the GOP than 5-2.

In Georgia if you got a court to draw a compact map with four black Atlanta seats, they might do something like this. Which is very much not something worth risking for the Georgia GOP.



I feel like if the court insisted a redrawing, the Georgia GOP would probably just try to do a map that gets rid of MTG, considering she's not overly popular in the party as a whole.

[patzer]

I have come up with a definitely fair map. For the court-required four black majority districts, I chose to pair the urban heavily-black areas of the Atlanta area with rural areas to the south rather than with the whiter areas of Atlanta, as this makes it easier for the black candidate of choice to win the Democratic primary. Thanks to this, it made sense to eliminate the 3rd district in its current formation, to provide enough population for the four black Atlanta districts (the 5th, 4th, 13th, and new 3rd).

The whiter areas of the Atlanta area are paired together to make a new 10th district, which is in fact the bluest district on the map. The rest of the map was drawn prioritizing compactness and avoiding county splits when possible, getting rid of ugly aspects of the current map like the 8th snaking around Macon. By 2016-2020 average, there are seven Democratic-leaning districts and seven Republican-leaning ones, so I definitely see no way that this map could possibly be considered unfair, and something like this should certainly be considered when the map is being redrawn.



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[patzer]

A thought- might Drew Ferguson's retirement tempt the Georgia GOP to redraw the congressional map in a way that eliminates the 3rd district, rather than risking the court drawing out a district with an incumbent?