Draw political boundaries to serve communities – not political outcomes

While our POTUS is sowing new seeds of doubt in our nation’s elections, do not forget an equally significant shift underway to make a once-a-decade process (district reapportionment following each U.S. census) into a process that can be redone by political whim and whichever party holds the current political majority. 

Welcome to the wonderful world of redistricting and political district map-making in 2026. Having worked under Georgia’s gold dome, and later Capitol Hill during times of Democratic and Republican majorities, I have witnessed both team red and team blue skewing district maps in their favor following U.S. Census results and during redistricting.    

In 1991, a solid Democratic majority in the Georgia General Assembly drew a map for the new 11th congressional district that looked like a Rorschach ink blot straddling I-20, reaching from Decatur to Savannah.  

State Rep. Cynthia McKinney won that new 11th congressional district, which had a 64 percent Black majority when she was elected in 1992 as the first Black woman to represent Georgia in Congress. McKinney was re-elected in 1994.   

Several constituents of McKinney’s new district (previously in several other districts with very different maps) challenged the new map in court, and during 1995 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Johnson that the district boundaries were unconstitutional gerrymandering. 

A special session of the Georgia General Assembly re-drew the congressional district maps, and Rep. McKinney’s district was subsequently renumbered the 4th district taking in most all of DeKalb County. Though McKinney protested the new map and district, which had a nearly identical racial demographic composition, she easily won re-election in 1996, 1998, and 2000. She lost her seat during the Democratic Primary in 2002.    

Political parties pursue a defined, even at times divisive, ideological agenda or policy, certainly.  It is common to promote candidates and statewide office holders who support your principles or core beliefs, no question. But we should not be using household and even precinct-level data on prior voting patterns and age/race/gender demographics in an attempt to draw customized political districts at the municipal, county, state, and federal levels to maintain or grow a power base or hang on to power. 

Those are the kind of power grabs that President George Washington feared in his longstanding opposition to political parties. 

And yet, President Donald Trump has been pressing GOP governors and legislatures in deep red states to convene special sessions and redraw their congressional district maps in part to increase GOP districts and potentially hold the GOP majority in the U.S. house in the coming mid-terms.   

I may be whistling in the wind or speaking to an audience still entranced by the Trump administration’s clarion call to roll the clock back to paper ballots and block all but overseas military and a very select few from voting by mail. The practice could use further securitization. Georgia made a strong step in that direction by requiring voter identification along with casting absentee ballots.   

Let’s remember the purpose of our U.S. House of Representatives to be the “people’s chamber,” and the similar intentions by charter and state constitution of those legislative bodies and the sub-ordinate cities, counties and townships which they created.   

We cannot entirely remove politics from politics. But how about we put the needs of the public and our cities, counties, and communities first? 

When we do redraw district maps, let’s consider and prioritize regions and communities of common interest. Let’s prioritize practical existing district boundaries, such as using city and county lines, large bodies of water and already determined metropolitan statistical areas, rather than drawing maps that often bisect neighborhoods and streets, sometimes playing hopscotch through a community by grabbing and separating upper- and lower-income neighborhoods within the same zip code. 

As a political independent these days, I will definitely be shown a lot when either party or its leadership puts the needs of We the People ahead of their desire for consolidating more power, influence, or racking up a larger majority, via clearly partisan gerrymandering and district map making.   

I may be too Pollyanna for even making the suggestion, but I certainly know that heading down this path would be extremely well received by the voting public at large. Maps drawn to guarantee extreme majorities often instead guarantee more extremist officeholders, further divided government, and a less- than-adequate result for the people they are all intended to serve.  

Do better. We deserve as much.