Decatur Five District Voting Map Mock-Up
Decatur Metro | June 9, 2011 | 12:09 pm
Some of you had expressed an interest in seeing this.
City Manager Peggy Merriss was good enough to send along the map that divides Decatur into five voting districts, and creates a “majority-minority” district down thru the south-center of the city (District 2).
Please note that none of the city commissioners have openly supported or voted for this map. They just felt it was important to look at prior to submitting the revised 2-district map to the U.S. Justice Department for approval under the Voting Rights Act.
Interesting that it appears as if all of the incumbents were protected (as in not drawing them into competing districts) under this plan.
I wonder if the maps would look different had this not been a consideration?
Is that actually true? If so….that’s sort of yucky.
In this map:
Boykin lives in District 1
Garrett lives in District 2 (the majority-minority district)
Floyd lives in District 3
Cunningham lives in District 4
Baskett lives in District 5 (they literally dropped the light blue just down S. Candler to put him there)
Coincidence? I think not.
It might not look any better, but I was just saying that I wonder what the map might look like if incumbency was not a consideration.
One problem: To the best of my knowledge, Kecia doesn’t live in the proposed District 4. She lives on the west side of South Candler in the area shown as District 2, which means there’d be two incumbents in District 2 and zero in District 4.
And I was so looking forward to a little political intrigue. Maybe even conspiracy!
Darn … I believe you are correct Scott. I believe she lives just inside the pink district lines which would have thrown her into a district with Patti Garrett, leaving the District 4 seat open.
I’m not sure how that would have even worked, since Kecia is up for re-election this year and Garrett has 2 more years to server.
But we’ll probably never have to worry about that unless the DOJ says we must create a majority minority district to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
None of this would have happened if the home base of all of our commissioners was listed on MEGA-MAP!
Thanks! That’s actually less freaky-looking than I expected, although I think the commissioners did the right thing in rejecting this plan and sticking with 2 districts.
So how will it go now? Two commissioners from one district, two from the other, and one at-large?
Yep, same as today.
The five single district map was produced by the Legislative and Congressional Reapportinment Office without reference to incumbancy of existing City of Decatur City Commissioners. Here is exactly what we requested: “Also, for comparison purposes, the City Commission would like to see a blind five single-member district map that reflects the “one-person/one-vote” standard as well as complies as closely as possible with the principles of Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.”
Oh please….
Were you trying to imply something?
Elbridge Gerry lives