Wednesday, August 22, 2001

James Madison and redistricting Georgia: Why the people lose

By KATHY COX
District 105 House of Representatives

[Editor's note: State Rep. Kathy Cox made the following remarks about redistricting in a speech before the Georgia House last week.]

I stand here today with the great James Madison (this is life size) by the way, he was only about 5 feet 3 I brought him with me today because as William Pierce, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Georgia said about him, "He always comes forward the best informed man of any point in debate." Madison was the best informed because as Pierce noted, "He blends together the profound politician with the scholar."

And so I would like to share with you some of this scholar's brilliant points about representation, and why I believe he, James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, the man that I believe had more to do with the founding of this great nation than anyone, why he would adamantly be opposed to this redistricting map that we are going to be asked to vote on today. Why would he be opposed to it? He'd be opposed because of these large, mega-multi-member districts that stretch geographically from one end of the state to another.

Two examples of such districts are show on your desk districts 84 and 49 (and I put these on your desks before I knew that we would have access to the computer generated so I would ask if those two districts would be put up on the screen as well). Now I would like to counter Mr. Smith's reference to the Senate and the Framers and his contention that they would support multi-member districts.

Mr. Smith forgot to mention the other House that's a part of Congress, the House of Representatives. You see the Framers didn't do anything by accident. Everything they did was thought out and well planned, and they made one house with small districts to represent the people and they chose another house to have a larger geographic constituency, that, may I remind Mr. Smith, was not even directly elected by the people in the beginning, they were appointed by the state legislatures.

So I would tend to agree with Rep. Brown when he said that comparing these multi-member districts to the U.S. Senate is quite a stretch. When Mr. Madison had the opportunity in the Federalist papers to explain the reasoning and the rationale of why the House of Representatives was constructed the way it was in the U.S. Constitution, he wrote in Federalist 56, "Divide the largest state into 10 or 12 districts and it will be found that there will be no peculiar interests... which will not be within the knowledge of the Representative of that district."

Furthermore he wrote in the same paper: "It is a sound and important principle that the representative ought to be acquainted with the interests and circumstances of his constituents." In Federalist 53, he added more: "No man can be a competent legislator who does not add to an upright intention and a sound judgment a certain degree of knowledge of the subjects on which he is to legislate. A part of this knowledge may be acquired by means of information which lies within the compass of men in private as well as public stations. Another part can only be attained, or at least thoroughly attained, by actual experience in the station which required the use of it."

Now I have been trying to ask a question to several of the people who have spoken about these multi-member districts and I haven't had a chance to get called on because we all have so many questions about this map. But my question was going to be this: Was there anyone that came forward to testify before the committee, or Mr. Jenkins' subcommittee, that talked about a community of interest that ran from Peachtree City to Butts County?

Was there anybody in that whole District 84, or now as it is labeled, District 79, anyone that came together and said, "Boy, we're a community of interest stretching along this south side and we really need to be together." I'm sure the people on Lake Jackson really care what happens on Lake Peachtree with all the golf carts.

This map doesn't make any sense about communities of interest. (If you can on the map, get a close-up of the red district that dips down into Peachtree City. I believe the precinct is Shakerag East or Shakerag West). You might not be able to get as close as I could when I asked for a printout. But let me show you this here. This yellow area is not the district that I will represent if I chose to run again.

This area right here is over in Mr. Westmoreland's district that is in Coweta County. This green area is the area that is now a part of a multi-member district that I am a part of. My home is this little blue star here.

The line between Mr. Westmoreland's district and my district runs along my backyard. Well, there have to be boundaries somewhere right?

Well, let me tell you about this area that they came down and took this little finger out of and put into Mr. Westmoreland's district. You see this area right here, this is where my children walk to school. We live less than a half a mile from the elementary and the middle school which my children attend and they pack on their backpacks and walk to school over in Mr. Westmoreland's district. Now that's not going to be my area of representation. That area, according to members of this committee, is not my community if interest. No, you see, my community of interest is going to be all the way over here in Butts County! This map makes no sense!

And furthermore I find that the people that have supported multi-member districts are talking out of both sides of their mouth. I attended a committee hearing in July when Rep. Jim Martin proposed the first of these 24 districts, and he had some great rationale for why his and Kathy Ashe's district should be put together. It all surrounded the logic and the rationale of both representing a community.

He talked about how it just didn't make sense, it just didn't make sense to draw district lines that separated the representative from the schools that their children went to.

Yet in this map that you have before you, there is a multi-member district that puts together the representatives and their schools and all the people of that community, District 41, and in the same map you've got lines drawn that deliberately come in and break apart a community of interest (District 79 and District 84).

You can't have it both ways. You either have multi-member districts because the people there have something in common and it doesn't make sense to break them up. Or you have single member districts and you do the best you can with the lines and the populations that live there.

I would also like to take up something that the representative said earlier about people just don't live in communities of 45,000 people that are all together.

Well, Mr. Skipper, come to Peachtree City. That's exactly what we've got and now we will be split into three different districts and the representative that lives in Peachtree City isn't going to represent all of Peachtree City. No, that representative will be asked to represent Fayette, Spalding, Henry and Butts counties!

There are many other reasons why multi-member districts are bad for the people of Georgia and bad for representative government. Single member districts have significant advantages for voters. For one: you can hold one person accountable for what happens in your area.

You know what's going to happen in these multi-member districts, folks? You're going to have some votes on things that the people back home are not going to like. Your going to have some local legislation that people are going to be able to get through that folks don't like and everybody in the multi-member district is going to be able to pass the buck.

Once again, go back to the Framers. Go back to Mr. Madison's notes on why the Framers chose one executive rather than a plural executive. Why they chose one person to ultimately be accountable to the people rather than a counsel of three executives and you'll understand that's it's very easy for people to pass the buck.

There is still another reason single member districts are far superior to these multi-member districts. Do you really think someone is going to be able to walk the neighborhoods and get out and meet the people in a district that spans probably at least a hundred miles from one end to the other?

People in south Georgia already know how difficult it is in a single member district that's large geographically, not to mention multi-member with twice the number of people.

What about the cost of campaigning? I have read a lot of articles in the media in Georgia as well as across the nation that the voters are sick and tired of money running everything we do in politics. Whether it's up in Congress or whether it's here in the state legislature or maybe it's even your county commission. People are tired of feeling like money and the quest for reelection and campaign money is running the show. All you're going to do is have people in the multi-member districts having to spend instead of $18,000 to $20,000 spending $50,000, $60,000, $75,000, $100,000 every two years to run an election campaign.

People have brought up the fact that multi-member districts were abandoned by Georgia after the 1990 census. Georgia was not the only state to abandon them in 1990. Wyoming abandoned them, Alaska, Vermont still had them. North Carolina still had them, and there was a move to get rid of them and I would maintain that we ought to take a look around and know that from Alaska, Wyoming to North Carolina to Vermont, states are abandoning multi-member districts and they are having debate and discussion about this latest census and people are adamantly saying, "We had them, don't bring them back. Don't bring them back."

Now people who are incumbents up here may scoff at the notion that campaigns are going to cost more. Big deal, you are an incumbent, you can raise that kind of money. But let me tell you the people of Georgia are listening today. And the people of Georgia want regular people to serve them in the legislature. They want people who are honest. They want members of their community. People who go to church with them. People whose kids play ball with them. People who drive the same roads as they do and understand the frustration with some of the same DOT projects. People that pay the same taxes as they do.

If the people of Georgia want that kind of representation for them in this body, they will adamantly reject this plan. And I hope they will be angry at the people who are putting this plan forward, who in my opinion, and who I believe Mr. Madison's opinion, are taking this state backwards in terms of representing the people!

I also hope that as I close my remarks, that the citizens of Georgia will have access to this information. I have been thoroughly dismayed at the coverage of what we have been doing up here. You can't find a map in the paper. The map of the Senate that was published was very inadequate and hard to read. I searched all over the Atlanta area newspapers' web sites to try and find a map. And it wasn't there.

I hope the media will do its job and get this message out to the people about what's being done to their communities and I hope the people of Fayette County will not forget what's happening to them. A county of 95,000 people who will have a delegation of 10 people and not a single solitary one of those 10 will be required to live in Fayette County. That's not right!

People need knowledge. The people need to see this map. They need to hear this debate. For as Madison said:

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." James Madison, letter to W.T. Barry, Aug. 4, 1822.

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