OUR OPINION: Draw districts fair, square

Jim Wooten - Staff
Sunday, February 15, 2004

While Democrats didn't invent the dirty deal, last week's decision by a three-judge federal panel confirms that they were far too malicious and clever for their own good, pushing both reapportionment law and computer software to the limits.

When it's all over, redistricting will be one of the Barnes' administration's greatest blunders. By slicing and dicing cities and counties --- the Senate plan split 81 counties into 219 parts; only 43 counties were split previously --- opinion leaders were angered in communities across the state.

And that redistricting effort so blatantly abandoned any illusion of legitimate state interest in tracking down and shooting Republicans as to offend the sensibilities of case-hardened federal judges, who issued an opinion that reads like a commission investigation of an atrocity. It meticulously documents in steady and damning detail the minutiae of a political process gone awry.

Appeal if you like, Mr. Attorney General, but this opinion will not be overturned. Bet the farm on it.

The General Assembly has two weeks, until March 1, to submit new districts that reflect one person/one vote. In the plans approved during the Barnes administration, how much your vote counts depends on where you live --- more in Democratic districts, less in Republican. Examples are legion of party efforts to track down and shoot individual Republican legislators such as, for example, former state Sen. Susan Cable of Macon, who was drawn into an unwinnable district with a Democratic incumbent while a new, open Senate seat was created two blocks from her home.

As offensive as that might have been, it is in and of itself not beyond the pale. Partisanship is to be expected in attempting to preserve political power. The Democrats, though, acting arrogantly and with bad legal advice, were too blindly efficient in their attempt to eradicate the opposition.

Their approach, the judges wrote, was not based on "any legitimate, consistently applied state interests but, rather, resulted from the arbitrary and discriminatory objective of increasing the political power of southern Georgia and inner-city Atlanta at the expense of voters living in other parts of the state, and from the systematic favoring of Democratic incumbents and the corresponding attempts to eliminate as many Republican incumbents as possible." New House and Senate districts were ordered.

What now? Clearly legislators will draw new maps. Or the courts will. The Senate has drawn maps and House Speaker Terry Coleman (D-Eastman) says the House will comply by the deadline. The conservative base of the Democratic Party is in rural Georgia. The Southern portion will lose in a one person/one vote redrawing. The question is: Who picks the losers? If the Democratic House does it, key players can be protected. If it's the judges, incumbents are fair game.

Gone, too, will be one device used to preserve power: multimember districts. Democrats folded at-risk districts into others. Instead of 180 single-member districts, with equal populations of 45,289, the party created 124 one-member districts with as few as 43,209 people, 15 two-member, six three-member and two four-member districts with a population of up to 176,939. Some Georgians have one representative; others have four. Wrapping three Democratic districts around one Republican is a way to elect four Democrats.

Gov. Sonny Perdue will not sign a redistricting plan that includes multimember districts. Nor, if the job falls to the judges, are they likely to keep them, either.

Respect communities. Create small, compact single-member districts. Protect minority legislators, as the Voting Act requires. Draw districts that are fair and square. Two weeks is plenty of time.

And yes, in the future, consider turning redistricting over to an independent panel with instructions to draw squares.

Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.

jwooten@ajc.com