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context:
Special Session 11/3-11/2021. All 3 maps passed to Governor for signing. (State Senate, State House, U.S. Representatives/Congress). This project is to write letters to the editor to be distributed to papers across Georgia. Letters should have a maximum of 250 words.
GA’s redistricting process is fundamentally flawed. It simply does not include partisan balance or competitiveness in the criteria. It’s more concerned about county and precinct splits. A flawed process produces flawed maps. Partisan gerrymandering may be perfectly legal, but it’s also perfectly wrong.
ask:
The “ask” in your letter could be:
Let your Republican legislator know that we see them protecting their seats, not protecting their people’s representation.
Let your Democratic legislator know that we expect them to commit to a future redistricting process that is transparent and values districts that reflects Gorgia Georgia citizens. Georgia is a swing state and should have competitive districts. Georgia is racially diverse.
talking points:
Choose one of the 2 letters below to write. The talking points may help you form your letter
letter #1: A faulty process yields faulty results
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Actually, we don’t know if it’s legal. The Supreme Court said that partisan gerrymandering is outside of their purview.
The maps do not measure favorably with the fairness benchmarks of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project (PGP). It simply does not include partisan balance or competitiveness in the criteria. Refer to “Proposed Map Comparisons”
It is possible to draw fair maps. Here are 5 fair congressional maps on Daves Redistricting: Citizen-Map-1, Citizen-Map-2, Citizen Map-3, Citizen-Map-4, Citizen-Map-5 . These maps receive a PGP grade of “A”.
Congressional map yields Republicans 64% seat majority in a state with under a 50% vote.
Partisan gerrymandering is evident. Partisan vote share should follow seat share (i.e. more votes for a party yields more seats). But we have seen a pattern of diverging vote share compared to seat share. Refer to “20-Year History of Redistricting”. The same trends hold for congress: between 2010-2012 the Republicans lost 2.4% of state vote share yet gained 1 congressional seat. Between 2010-2020 Republican vote share has declined by 49.2% yet the proposed congressional map would add 1 Republican seat.
The number of competitive districts are reduced, yet Georgia is a swing state. Refer to “Proposed Map Comparisons”
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quotes on the value of democratic representation:
The following quotes are for you to copy and use.
We want maps that respond to the needs of citizens over political parties.
People over Power.
Competitive districts are good for democracy. Candidates who win in competitive races are responsive to electorate.
History has it’s eyes on Georgia
Our beauty is in our diversity. Diversity is connected to Georgia’s economic growth. Why are we suppressing it?
From Senator Jones Senate floor speech 11/19 speaking about the committee process: Race is a defining element of America. We have to deal with it. It's not us against them. It's the constitution of the United States. It helps all of us. If we truly believed it we would have gone through the process [of having an intelligent conversation about compliance with the Voting Rights Act]. We took the easy way out and failed to tackle the most pressing problem in our nation. Next time we can hope for the courage to do this correctly.
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Data, Data, Data: All the numbers you need are provided on the Fair Districts GA Legislator Resource page. Of particular interest on this page is the Princeton Gerrymandering Project benchmark data and comparisons, and the vote-share vs seat-share analysis over 20 years (showing gerrymandering in outcomes).
In the attachments below you may will find the attached “Myths vs Facts” to offer some clarification over some prior contentious claims.
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