News that the Georgia Legislature will have to redraw the state’s congressional district lines was welcomed by many people in the southwestern part of Cobb County who this year became new constituents of controversial Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Residents of southwest Cobb, which includes the mostly Black cities of Austell and Powder Springs, said they were shocked in 2021 to learn the Republican-led General Assembly had drawn them into the 14th Congressional District, which stretches north through western Georgia to the Tennessee border.
But things could change after a federal judge ruled that Georgia’s congressional and legislative maps violated the Voting Rights Act of of 1965, which prohibits racial discrimination in elections. The Legislature has until Dec. 8 to produce the new political maps.
Specifically, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones told lawmakers to create a fifth majority-Black congressional district located in west metro Atlanta. And the makeup of the 14th District was one he said should be addressed.
The Legislature drew the lines of Greene’s district in a way that pulled racially diverse parts of Cobb County that had been part of a majority-Black, Democratic district into her northwest Georgia district — which is drastically less diverse and represented by a far-right Republican congresswoman. About 61,000 Cobb County voters were moved into Greene’s district.
Deborah Douglin, a Black resident of Powder Springs who works in real estate, said she was “blindsided” when she was drawn into Greene’s district in 2021. Douglin was previously in the 13th Congressional District 13, represented by with Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott as her representative.
“I believe that gerrymandering has got us stuck with somebody who absolutely, in no shape or form, represents who I am, what we think or what we…
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