Columbus resident Dorris Porter Edgerton is aware of the Republican-led redistricting efforts looming in the General Assembly, but she’s more concerned about a lack of Black voter engagement in the state’s second-most populous city.
“We have lots of people who really just do not vote at all because they say it won’t make a difference,” Edgerton, 80, told Capital B Atlanta during a May 12 campaign stop by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms at the Columbus Public Library.
“This is what I hear, especially talking to younger people. Some just don’t vote. They say, ‘It’s going to be done the way [those in power] want it to be done anyway,” Edgerton continued. Voting doesn’t matter, they say, “because we don’t have any rights.’”
Columbus residents like Edgerton live in Georgia’s 2nd Congressional District, a predominantly Black area that includes parts of central and southwest Georgia. It is the state’s largest congressional district by land mass and includes most of Columbus, as well as Macon and Albany. But most of those who live in the district reside in rural areas.
U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, the district’s representative since 1993, has been identified as the Georgia lawmaker most likely to lose his seat in 2028 as a result of GOP-led redistricting deliberations set to begin on June 17.
Gov. Brian Kemp called for the session following the U.S. Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais. The ruling effectively nullified Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which previously made it illegal to dilute the voting power of Black Americans. Kemp said Georgia’s new political maps won’t take effect until the 2028 election cycle.
Royal Anderson, Muscogee County Democratic Party chair, suggested most Black voters in the Columbus region are struggling economically amid the state’s affordability crisis and aren’t paying close enough attention to the potential dilution of their voting power at the state and federal levels.
“It’s unfortunate that people are [so] forced to work on making a livable wage and taking care of families that they’re not even really in tune to what this means for the bulk of us,” Anderson told Capital B Atlanta. “The ones of us that do understand it, we understand that we have to stand and fight. We have to speak out about it, bring awareness to what’s happening.”
Anderson and other Democrats are focused on turning out the vote in November, hoping Bottoms or a Democratic-led state House and state Senate could neutralize the new maps before they take effect.
“We have to elect strong Democrats before the push of this redistricting even starts, because that’s going to be the stronghold to keep us together,” she said.
Fellow Columbus resident Gamaliel Warren Turner expressed similar concerns about younger Black voters in Georgia not being fully aware of the impact of redistricting. The 72-year-old retired U.S. Army veteran was one of the plaintiffs in a 2021 lawsuit against the Muscogee County Board of Elections after his voter eligibility was challenged by conservative election activists.
He said the mail-in ballot he cast that year for Raphael Warnock in his U.S. Senate runoff race against Herschel Walker was ultimately counted. He’s been in a six-year court battle to ensure it still does.
The legal drama was the subject of Vigilantes Inc. a 2024 documentary about modern-day voter suppression. Turner said the Louisiana v. Callais ruling marked the end of America’s post-Civil Rights Movement era and the beginning of a new one in which Black youth must be the foot soldiers and generals guarding democracy.
“My message really is to stop playing, to start paying attention,” Turner said. “My generation is watching to see what you’re going to do. You can’t play games anymore.”
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