There is a legitimate argument

that splitting some counties between more than one Senate district provides

more representation. It's hard to justify creating a district that touches

six counties, such as in the proposed 17th, but having more than one senator

representing the county's interests might end up being a benefit when

money is being sought for local projects.

On the other hand, there is

an equally legitimate worry that a county's overall interests and needs

will be buried or even ignored among a hodgepodge of partisan conflicts.

After all, Fayette is a single governmental unit: County taxes and county

services stop at the county line.

Will any one senator have the

big picture on Fayette's behalf? Likely not.

That said, there is no way

that House Democrats can justify the jumble of tortured multi-member districts

that they have brought to the floor.

The tactic was clear in the

Civil Rights era. If you want to limit the number of minority-represented

districts, you take an area with strong minority voting strength and lump

it into a much larger district with even stronger majority voting strength.

Then, instead of one district with a minority representative and another

with a majority representative, you have one mega-district with two or

three white representatives.

The House Reapportionment Committee

has lumped north Fayette into a two-member district where the majority

of voters will be in Fulton County and the city of Atlanta, virtually

guaranteeing that there will be two Atlanta residents representing that

part of Fayette, with no real incentive to pay much attention to the area.

The voting strength, after all, will be in Fulton.

In another clever ploy, the

committee has thrown three sitting Republican incumbents into a single

two-member 84th District. Simple math: you exchange three Republicans

for two.

In the end, Gov. Roy Barnes

and Democrats in the legislature have turned a decennial quest for equitable

representation into a raw grab for continued power. In their political

greed, they have spit on the concept of natural, local, political boundaries.

Now there are two classes of Georgians: Democrats in power, at any cost,

and the rest of us, who have been gerrymandered out of meaningful political

participation.

If voters statewide don't see

this for what it is and revolt next election, they deserve the contempt

in which they will continue to be held by Barnes and his Democrat machine.