Democrats and Republicans in Georgia are assembling all the tools they can muster to sway voters in what promises to be a hotly contested election year.
The people who sued to overturn Georgia's congressional and legislative districts are attacking plans that Republican state lawmakers claim cure illegal dilution of Black votes while preserving GOP power.
Is a newly redrawn congressional map, along with two revised legislative maps, an act of defiance or exactly what federal Judge Steve Jones instructed lawmakers to do when he struck down Georgia’s political maps for diluting the voting strength of Black voters?
The House Committee on reapportionment and redistricting passed the congressional map proposed by Senate Republicans as the Legislature moves closer to wrapping up the special legislative session on Thursday.
Georgia state senators are advancing a new congressional map that would maintain a 9-5 GOP edge in the state's delegation. The Senate voted 32-22 to pass the plan, which seeks a wholesale reconfiguration of a suburban Atlanta district now represented by Democrat Lucy McBath.
Georgia Republicans are advancing a proposed congressional map that maintains their party's 9-5 majority in the state's congressional delegation. A Senate committee voted 7- 4 along party lines on Monday to send the map to the state Senate for more debate.
Georgia Republicans want to redraw the state's congressional districts to create a new court-ordered Black majority district while maintaining the current 9-5 Republican congressional majority. The proposal released Friday shows they are again targeting Democratic U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath's district for wholesale transformation.
In an October ruling, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ordered the legislature to draw five additional Black-majority districts in the House and two additional Black-majority districts in the Senate to accommodate increases in Georgia’s Black population in the last decade. On Friday, Republicans said their new maps honor Jones’ ruling.