The census is complete, and now comes the season of redrawing lines for our legislative districts, as mandated by law every 10 years.

In Georgia this process is controlled by the Georgia General Assembly, so whichever political party has more seats gets to control the lines -- influencing state politics, funding and elections for the next decade.

Lacking an open, fair and public process isn't good for Georgia voters. We could be negatively impacted for 10 long years. Communities often have influence, but this can be diluted by redrawn district lines, which, in some cases, make no sense except to help folks in power to stay there.

This is called cracking. There is another strategy, called packing, where voters of the "preferred" party (or whatever criteria folks in power decide is desirable) are loaded into a newly redrawn district to consolidate their power.

Neither of these strategies would be the result of a non-partisan process or one based purely on statistical averages. Our state constitution provides for the vote, but we must have fair, open and non-partisan maps to ensure this.

Please ask your legislators for non-partisan guidelines and oversight for drawing fair maps and to learn more visit http://fairdistrictsga.org

Harriet Jardine,

Published Savannah Morning News June 4