Governor Roy Barnes has called a special session for the first of August to redraw legislative lines and then he says he will call for another session to redraw Congressional district lines. Multimember districts had been used in the past up to 1980 to dilute black voting strength, but the threat of several lawsuits challenging the multimember districts as a violation of the federal Voting Rights Act stopped the practice. Republicans say this time the practice is an effort to dilute Republican votes around the entire state. The Republican leadership in the legislature has hopes that population gains since the 1990 Census in districts dominated by their party will translate into more seats for them in the legislature. Republicans dispute the contention that multimember districts would mean more representation for citizens, saying the intent of federal civil rights laws is to prevent the dilution of a citizen's ability to elect who they want to represent them.
Democrats say constituents gain political clout with more representation in the legislature.
Other critics of the multimember districts say they will attract negative attention from the US Department of Justice, particularly if the district has a substantial number of black voters. But supporters say a series of US Supreme Court decisions remove some of the emphasis on race in redistricting. Some of the supporters of the multimember districts are black legislators. Representative Tommy Smith, Democrat of Alma and chairman of the House redistricting committee said Friday multimember districts were particularly useful in rural areas where small counties would be grouped together and share several legislators thereby balancing the greater number of legislators in the more populous north Georgia area. As a bonus, according to some Democrats, if several multimember districts could be created across south Georgia, some of the few Republican incumbents in those areas could be left to run in Democratic-leaning multimember districts.