A Waffle House grill where slicing and dicing takes place Photo via Wikipedia.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 17, 2021 | Here’s a prediction. After Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislative reapportionment committee gets done with its work this year, Gwinnett is going to get “scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, peppered and capped.”
That’s right, we’re going to get the Waffle House treatment in the way the county will be divided along Congressional lines. It’ll all be done so that the Republicans will make it harder for a Democrat to be elected.
The Republicans will be specifically aiming at the two Democrats in the Sixth and Seventh Congressional Districts, Louise McBath and Carolyn Boudreaux. By carving up two Democratic areas, the Sixth District (Tucker to Sandy Springs to East Cobb to Milton and Johns Creek), and the Seventh District (most of Gwinnett and part of Forsyth County), Republicans could jeopardize these two current Democratic Congresswomen.
And presto! Gwinnett, currently also represented by two other Congressmen, Hank Johnson and Jody Hice, could end up being carved into portions of four, five or even six Congressional districts, all with the intent of minimizing the Democratic vote. Wild? Yes. But it could happen. We’ve heard of worse butchering of district lines.
However, gerrymandering is a tricky business. By concentrating on trying to gain advantage in two Congressional districts of the state, it also directly affects the other 12 Congressional districts. And you can bet that every sitting Congressional delegate is trying to protect their own district where they are well known and of which they are familiar. Adding lots of new territory to a district, while taking away familiar areas, is not favored by incumbents.
Sometimes gerrymandering can work. When South Carolina was redrawing Congressional districts after the 1990 census, the U.S. Supreme Court required a Black-majority district to make up for past racial discrimination. The result was that Black voters were corralled into a district stretching from Charleston to Columbia. With lots of Black voters packed into one district, this led to the election of Black Rep. James Clyburn, now the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House. The gerrymandering result was that the remaining congressional districts, even to today, have a substantially lower Black population, which favors the election of Republican members of Congress.
Don’t for a minute get the idea that the only bad actors practicing gerrymandering are Republicans. No matter what the party, those in power almost always seek to draw the new districts in their favor.
For instance, in Democrat-dominated New York state this year, the re-drawing of lines there is anticipated to favor Democrats, and could influence the overall make-up of Congress. Here’s why: some have predicted that after the reapportionment, Republicans might lose five seats to Democrats in that state, the most in the nation. Should that happen, Republicans would be hard pressed to regain control of the U.S. House. That means that in most Republican newly-gerrymandered states, that state most likely could contribute only one more GOP vote, making the five more New York Democratic votes in Congress hard to overcome.
The ironic aspect in New York is that previously that state has voted to use a tool many for good government advocates: a non-partisan, independent commission to redraw Congressional lines. Now some are thinking that the greedy New York Democrats might scuttle that provision, and grab more seats for their own party in the 2022 redistricting.
More states, including Georgia, should adopt an independent, non-partisan panel to redraw Congressional lines. Already, this is in effect in 13 states. But you can bet in Georgia, and possibly New York, it won’t be this year. Gwinnett’s probably going to be Waffle-ized.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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