Contact the Redistricting Committee

Every ten years, the Georgia State Legislature approves new maps for local school boards and county commissioners for every county and entity in the state of Georgia. The legislature has set rules that provide for local legislators to introduce legislation for each entity that falls within their jurisdiction. Rep. Ginny Ehrhart and Rep. John Carson are attempting to hijack this process by bypassing local legislation and pushing through a partisan maps through general legislation. The school board map they propose is the original map proposed by former Chairman Randy Scamihorn which was passed with zero input from the public and was drawn by a firm with a subsidiary whose CEO is the husband of Rep. Ehrhart. The legislation has been named HB 1028. The county commission map they propose was created in secrecy by Rep. Carson. The legislation has been named HB 1154.

The school board map alters the post lines in such a way that almost 100,000 residents in Post 4 and Post 6 (shown at the bottom of this page) would no longer be able to vote for school board in this year’s election. The partisan changes also would make none of the posts competitive for years. This could assure a dysfunctional 4-3 GOP majority on the board for the next decade and potentially put our county in danger of losing COGNIA accreditation. And it would provide job security for Superintendent Chris Ragsdale for as long as he wants the job.

The commission map cracks the East Cobb/Smyrna commission post and would threaten pushing out elected member Jerica Richardson halfway through her term. It invalidates the votes of hundreds of thousands of residents who chose her for her seat. It creates a new district called the “transportation corridor” pairing residents who live near the battery with those who live near Kennesaw and Town Center mall.

For the past several days, we have been running a social media campaign alerting residents in Kennesaw and East Cobb that Rep. Ehrhart and Rep. Carson are attempting to take away their school board vote. We expect that message to have been seen by close to 15,000 residents by end of day. And dozens of Cobb County residents showed up in-person at the State Capitol this Monday to speak out against the two maps in front of a special sub-committee. Only two residents showed up to speak out in favor of the maps. Our large presence there made such an impact that Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Kennesaw) lashed out at us calling us party activists who weren’t representative of “real” Cobb County residents “on the ground.”

These partisan maps have not yet been approved so there’s still time to act. If we are to change the minds of the entire committee, we have to show that there are hundreds more in the county who are not in favor of these maps and who want maps drawn by a majority of our legislators in the county. The full committee on redistricting will be meeting on Wednesday, 2/9, at 2pm. For those that can show up, that would be great. We’d love to have a show of force equal to or greater than what we had on Monday. We realize that most of you will not be able to do that. So we are providing an easy way to email all members of the committee to have your voice heard.