Gov. Brian Kemp signed a proclamation Thursday calling for a special session of the Georgia General Assembly to conduct reapportionment tasks.
The special session will start Nov. 3 and will not include any other topics.
Georgia legislators redraw Congressional and state legislative districts, and local delegations draw county commission and school board districts every 10 years with a new Census.
The U.S. Census Bureau released some of that data in August, and is expected to release more data at the end of September.
The information is being released later than usual due to collections delays because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The General Assembly has strong Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, and some Congressional reapportionment redrawings will be closely watched.
They include the 6th Congressional District, which includes most of East Cobb, as well as North Fulton, Sandy Springs and north and central DeKalb.
The 6th has been represented since 2019 by Lucy McBath, the first Democrat to hold the seat in 40 years.
She unseated former U.S. Rep. Karen Handel in 2018 and defeated her in a rematch in 2020. Several Republicans have announced they will be running in 2022.
All of the state legislators from East Cobb are Republicans, although Democrats have been making strides in the last two elections.
Among them is Luisa Wakeman, who has come close in 2018 and 2020 to unseating veteran GOP lawmaker Sharon Cooper, the chairwoman of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
The Cobb legislative delegation, which has a one-seat Democratic majority, will be redrawing lines for the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the Cobb Board of Education.
In the 2020 elections, party control of the commission flipped from 4-1 Republican to 3-2 Democrat. In 2022, both of the GOP members, Keli Gambrill of District 1 in West Cobb and JoAnn Birrell of District 3 in Northeast Cobb, will be up for re-election.
The Cobb school board has a 4-3 Republican majority and three of those seats will be affected by reapportionment in 2022.
Two of them are in the East Cobb area: GOP member David Chastain of Post 5 (Kell, Sprayberry clusters) and Democrat Charisse Davis of Post 6 (Walton, Wheeler clusters).
Along party lines, the school board voted 4-3 in August to hire Taylor English, a Cobb-based law firm, to draw up a proposed map of reapportioned school board posts to submit to the legislative delegation.
State Rep. Matt Dollar, a Republican from East Cobb, is a member of the House reapportionment committee.
State Sen. Michael “Doc” Rhett, whose Cobb district includes some of East Marietta, sits on the Senate reapportionment committee.
More state reapportionment information, including procedures, maps, meeting schedules and population updates, can be found by clicking here.
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- East Cobb Elections Guide
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If you can’t win on good ideas, win by fixing the game?
Why are politicians involved at all in setting up districts?
Do like some other states have done and put non-political teams together to draw fair, reasonable, and apportioned districts without gerrymandering.
It is 2021. We should do better and the 1950s.