Governor Inks New Gwinnett BOE, BOC Maps

With a stroke of Gov. Nathan Deal's pen, Gwinnett County's proposed new maps for the school board and county commission are on their way to Washington, DC, for federal review.

A Democratic state senator, who had asked Deal to veto the maps on grounds of minority disenfranchisement, said he plans to continue his challenge of the maps, which were redrawn by the Georgia General Assembly using 2010 Census data.

"I'll be submitting comments," said State Sen. Curt Thompson (D-Tucker), who maintains his GOP colleagues should have drawn a majority African-American district for the Gwinnett County Board of Education and the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners in south Gwinnett. Neither of the boards has African-American members.

Comments are the official way to express opinions to either the federal Department of Justice or federal judges who will check the maps for fairness to minority voters.

Under the federal Voting Rights Act, states including Georgia with a history of disenfranchising minority voters must send maps through one of those two federal checkpoints. The maps cannot have the motive or effect of diluting minority voting power.

Either way, said Thompson, "we'll make the case that maps such as these should be returned [to Georgia] and redrawn."

Every 10 years, the Georgia legislature must redraw all elected office districts to equalize population based on new census numbers. In 2010, Gwinnett's population was about 24 percent black compared to about 13 percent in 2000.

Duluth Republican State Sen. David Shafer, in response to a request from Duluth Patch, previously issued the following statement about Thompson's charges of unfairness: "The maps went through several drafts. I opposed early versions that would have unnecessarily split the city of Duluth. I believe the final version passed by the General Assembly is fair."

The GOP majority in the state legislature means that party controlled all district redraws.

Gov. Deal announced Thursday (Sept. 22) that he had signed the maps. Deal has not yet indicated if he will chose to send the maps to the judiciary or the Department of Justice.

If the governor follows precedent, he'll send maps to the judiciary rather than a Department of Justice run by the other political party. When Democrats controlled Georgia's legislature in 2001, they sent their new maps to judges, rather than to the Justice Department under Republican President George W. Bush.

The feds will rule on the maps by early next year if they follow standard deadlines. They'll either approve the maps or send them back with requests for changes in specific areas.

Roughly half of the memers of both the Gwinnett school board and board of commissioners are up for re-election in 2012. If there are no problems with the maps, they will run in the newly shaped districts. 

Thompson's state Senate district covers parts of DeKalb and Gwinnett counties including some of Duluth.