Georgia on Wednesday will become the latest Southern state to seize upon the recent Supreme Court decision on voting rights to consider redrawing its congressional lines to favor the Republican Party.
Gov. Brian Kemp has summoned lawmakers to the Capitol in Atlanta for a special session, aiming to lock in new federal and state legislative lines ahead of the 2028 elections. He has also called them to address what experts regard as a looming crisis with the state’s election law, heading off a July 1 deadline that would set off a major disruption to the November election.
The redistricting frenzy was set in motion by an April Supreme Court ruling that weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by effectively declaring that many intentionally drawn Black-majority districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. That created an opening for Republican-led states like Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana to wipe out districts that traditionally elected Democrats.
Republican officials in Georgia have been tight-lipped so far about how far they are willing to go to try to diminish Democratic representation in the state, and it is still unclear when they will release the proposed new maps.
Why maps for 2028, and not this year?
Unlike in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana, in Georgia, Republicans are not trying to put new maps in place for the November election. Mr. Kemp, a Republican, said it was too late because early voting in the state’s May primary was already underway.
Why do it now?
Other states, both Democratic- and Republican-led, have signaled they will redraw their maps before the 2028 election. Georgians are not waiting. With an outgoing Republican governor and Republican majorities in both houses of the State Legislature under pressure, the party did not want to risk waiting until after the November election.
Democrats, who have harnessed demographic shifts in Georgia to become competitive in the state, are optimistic that President Trump’s flagging popularity and voters’ frustrations over affordability and voting rights will prop up their nominee in the governor’s race, Keisha Lance Bottoms, a former Atlanta mayor, and their statehouse candidates.
To undo a gerrymander approved in 2026, Ms. Bottoms would have to win in November, and Democrats would have to seize control of both houses in the legislature.
Which districts are vulnerable for Democrats?
Some Republicans are reluctant to redraw maps at all, and lawmakers have so far given little indication of what they have in mind.
Georgia’s 14-member U.S. House delegation includes four Democrats, all of whom are Black. The 13th Congressional District is considered one of Democrats’ safest, but it has been vacant since Representative David Scott, another Black Democrat, died in April. (A special election to serve the remainder of his term for the district, covering the eastern flank of Atlanta, is scheduled for July 28.)
Georgia’s Second Congressional District, which covers a southwestern swath of the state and has been represented since 1993 by Sanford Bishop, is widely considered the seat most at risk.
Lawmakers might also target the Sixth Congressional District, represented by Lucy McBath. The district, which includes suburbs flanking the west side of Atlanta, is multiracial and multiethnic, with a bare Black majority. .
An aggressive Republican gerrymander could weaken the strong Democratic majority in Georgia’s Fourth District, dominated by liberal DeKalb County, by pushing it eastward, and the vacant 13th District by pushing it west. But those moves would carry the risk of sending large numbers of Democratic voters into neighboring Republican districts.
The one district that seems safe for Democrats, the Fifth, in the heart of Atlanta, was long held by icons of the civil rights movement, Andrew Young and John Lewis.
Why is the political landscape more complicated for Republicans in Georgia than in other Southern states?
Republican lawmakers in Georgia faced limitations that their counterparts in other states did not.
For one thing, Atlanta and its suburbs — longtime strongholds of Black and Democratic power — are so big that they render redistricting particularly tricky. For another, Georgia is a swing state where Democrats are competitive even though Republicans still control many levers of power.
And Atlanta takes seriously its history as the cradle of the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court decision stoked widespread outrage from many who consider the ruling a direct attack on that legacy. Democratic leaders, elected officials and activists hope to channel that energy with demonstrations outside the State Capitol and opposition within.
Some Republicans worry that redistricting for 2028 could have unintended fallout in pivotal elections in 2026, by inspiring outrage — among Black voters, in particular — that could embolden support for Ms. Bottoms, who would be Georgia’s first Black person and woman elected governor, and Jon Ossoff, the Democratic senator seeking re-election.
What is the crisis with election law?
The governor has also tasked lawmakers with handling another pressing matter; a law set to go in effect on July 1 would prohibit elections officials from using QR codes to tabulate ballots.
The law was passed in 2024 as part of a Republican effort to overhaul election practices based on Mr. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his loss in Georgia in 2020. Supporters of the measure are skeptical of touch-screen voting machines, which print out a voter’s choices along with a QR code that includes the same information, but in a form that is indecipherable to humans. Those paper ballots are fed into a scanner that reads the QR code — a setup that, critics argue, does not allow voters to verify their choices.
The current system would be rendered illegal under the 2024 law, but lawmakers failed during the regular legislative session to designate or fund a new system. Mr. Kemp has urged lawmakers to remedy this. One of the simpler solutions would be delaying the law’s rollout.
What has happened with redistricting in other states?
Mr. Trump has sought to get ahead of a potentially brutal midterm election and pad Republicans’ narrow majority in the House by gerrymandering the map in his party’s favor mid-decade. Traditionally, new maps are drawn only at the beginning of the decade when the census reapportions population. The redistricting campaign started last year with a Texas map that could give Republicans as many as five additional seats.
Democrats tried to counter. A new map in California added up to five seats more favorable to Democrats. But a plan to make similar changes in Virginia collapsed after it was blocked by the State Supreme Court, leaving Republicans with an advantage after Florida, Missouri and North Carolina redrew their House maps.
Then the Supreme Court’s voting rights ruling tipped the balance distinctly in Republicans’ direction. Tennessee eliminated its lone majority-Black district with Democratic representation. Louisiana and Alabama both eliminated one of their two districts drawn to promote Black representation.
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