[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