Ga. Says PSC Election Challengers Seek to Boost Democrats

The 1965 Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 is “a protection against racial discrimination, not a freewheeling license for federal courts to reimagine state government to boost a minority’s preferred political party,” Georgia said Wednesday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Georgia is appealing a lower court’s ruling that electing Public Service Commission members for specific districts on a statewide, at-large basis, illegally dilutes Black votes. In a reply brief, Georgia disagreed with filings by amicus DOJ and plaintiffs, who are Black voters from the Atlanta area (see 2210270027 and 2210200035). Section 2 doesn't guarantee election wins, “just a playing field free of racial bias,” the state said: For there to be a violation, "the majority must vote on the basis of race, not political differences." Plaintiffs view “would affirmatively transform all political disagreement into racially divisive disputes,” it said. Plaintiffs and DOJ “seem to welcome the unconstitutional idea that [section] 2 is a proportional-representation machine that ensconces Democrats alone into advantageous electoral districts.” It’s irrelevant how feasible it is to change elections to single-member districting, in which candidates would be elected by only people in their specific district, said Georgia. “The reason the district court cannot order a quasi-judicial, statewide commission to break itself up into pieces is that it would change the ‘form of government,’ not that it would be literally impossible.”