Is gerrymandering the cause of low turnout in Fulton County voting districts?

When Canopy Atlanta looked at 2020 voting data, the lowest turnout precincts in metro Atlanta were all in Fulton County, concentrated in the city’s west end and southern Fulton. But why?

Voting rights and redistricting experts say the way Georgia has drafted its legislative plans may be a contributing factor.

The precincts are all in predominantly lower-income communities of color, and the ones in South Fulton in particular straddle the border between precincts. The way precincts divide voters in places like South Fulton, Union City and College Park means that people in the same community can have different state legislators, skewing their representation, creating confusion and a sense of apathy, experts say.

Successive rounds of redistricting have also led to less competitive elections, with Georgia’s most recent maps leaving only five of the state’s 236 combined House and Senate seats competitive, according to Fair Districts GA, a redistricting advocacy group. This, said Stephanie Jackson Ali, policy director at The New Georgia Project, is leading to voter apathy.

“There are just a lot of uncontested races, and that discourages people from voting because they think, ‘Why should I get so involved in this when there are so many uncontested races?’” she said, adding that “because of the lack of competition, people just aren’t as excited because they don’t feel like their vote matters.”

Another factor, Ali said, is that the redistricting in certain areas, including South and West Fulton, but also areas such as Macon, Henry and Clayton County, has radically changed which legislators represent whom.

“They often see completely new names, not familiar names, and that means, again, they’re less engaged because these are people they may not know from their community and they may not recognize,” she said.

The redistricting changes, which specifically affected South Fulton, were a major focus of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) legal challenge to Georgia’s legislative plan, which is pending in federal court.

“The south metro Atlanta area is one of the areas where the district court in our redistricting case has found that the vote — particularly the vote of Black voters — has been diluted, and that is something that I think has an effect on turnout,” said Caitlin May, a voting rights attorney with the ACLU.

U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled after an eight-day trial in September 2023 that Georgia’s maps must be redrawn because they violated the Voting Rights Act. In particular, the judge found that in metro Atlanta and around Macon, the district boundaries “fragmented” those areas’ growing black populations.

In December, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed new maps to address the problem, but the ACLU argues that the maps do not adequately comply with Judge Jones’ ruling, and the state has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which has not yet scheduled a hearing. In practice, the court is unlikely to rule before the Nov. 5 general election, May said.

“When communities feel that their voices are not being heard and that they cannot elect the candidates of their choice, the incentive to vote diminishes,” May said.

Bridgemon Bolger, a political consultant who also serves as the city’s attorney general for South Fulton, said voters in working-class neighborhoods are especially attentive to issues that affect their daily lives. A series of political scandals and the polarized nature of politics likely also contribute to voter apathy.

“I think all of this creates a lot of apathy and distrust,” he said.

Critics say Georgia’s legislation is heavily manipulated, using practices known as “packing and cracking.”

The Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a group that conducts independent mathematical analyses for activists and lawmakers to advocate for fairer legislative maps, explains the processes this way:

“Packing” occurs when many supporters of the victim party are crammed into a small number of districts, giving them a few overwhelming victories. The remaining members of the victim party are then “cracked,” spread out over a large number of districts so that they consistently win just under 50% of the vote.

According to May, this packing and squatting is exactly what is happening in the areas of Atlanta that saw the lowest turnout in 2020.

“This is an area of ​​the state where we have shown that there is voter dilution, and communities are overcrowded and fractured, and that will have an impact on voter turnout over a period of years,” she said.

Still, Judge Jones’ ruling required that more black-majority districts be created. But that doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of districts being drawn in a way that tears communities apart.

If you look at the shapes of voting districts in metro Atlanta, particularly in Fulton and DeKalb counties, they are often long strips running north to south, like ribbons or “bacon strips,” that are not centered on any particular neighborhood, says Ali of the New Georgia Project.

“These strip districts, which we have in Fulton now, and which we have in DeKalb, make it really difficult to have a cohesive district that focuses on a community of interest, or a community of any kind… And so you end up seeing candidates running for one side of the district or the other,” she said.

This is the case for the lowest turnout precincts in Union City, College Park and South Fulton, as identified by Canopy Atlanta. These cities are divided into strip districts in the state Senate between Senate Districts 36, 38 and 39.

On the state district maps, these areas are divided into districts 59, 62, 63, and 68. These are all so-called “strip” districts.

Even if the ACLU’s legal action results in fairer maps, it is unlikely to help restore voters’ confidence in the system, May said.

“Once a community has seen their legislature try to dilute and drown out their voice, it’s hard to regain that trust or that motivation to vote,” she said.

How we reported this story:

This story, by Atlanta Civic Circle democracy reporter Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon, is part of ACC’s editorial partnership with Canopy Atlanta’s Barriers and Bridges Election Project. Read more about the series and project here. This story was edited by Stephanie Toone and reviewed by Julianna Bragg.