Atlanta City Council Redistricting
With the decennial process rapidly approaching for City Council, it's important to take stock of where things stand.
Reapportionment is the process by which electoral power is redistributed to ensure that all people have equal say in their governing institutions. It is necessary for any chamber that does not elect all its members at-large. The most important part of reapportionment is the redrawing of electoral boundaries to reflect population changes, or redistricting. With election season over, this process will be taking place soon at Atlanta City Hall.
Atlanta City Council elects 12 of its 15 councilors from single-member districts; these districts were last redrawn in late 2011 using data from the 2010 US Census. Federal courts generally allow the difference in percent deviation between the most overpopulated and most underpopulated districts to be no greater than 10%; the districts adopted nearly a decade ago had a relative overall range of 9.75%, falling narrowly within the acceptable limit. However, this meant that even the most minor population shifts would quickly make the maps unlawfully malapportioned. Another factor that would affect the population balance of the districts is annexation. In 2018, the City of Atlanta annexed the campus of Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was previously unincorporated in DeKalb County. The city also annexed several parcels on its eastern and western edges, increasing the populations of the districts those areas were joined to. By 2020, the relative overall range of Atlanta’s City Council districts ballooned to nearly 50%, the result of significant growth in the Eastside and population stagnation in the Southside.
A notable fact about population shifts in the last decade is that for the first time in a while, no city council district lost population. Even Andrea Boone’s District 10 gained 226 people, despite being the most underpopulated. However the rapid pace of infill development in Midtown Atlanta produced a 17,202-population gain for District 2, currently held by Amir Farokhi. Atlanta’s growth as a Sun Belt hub for several industries has attracted jobs and people, pushing the city’s total population to just short of five hundred thousand.
As Atlanta grows, it is also becoming more diverse. The raw population figures for each census racial group increased over the last 10 years. The growth in the white and Asian populations outpaced the increase in the black population, leading the black voting age population share of each City Council district to decrease. Between 2010 and 2020, District 5, which will be held by Liliana Bakhtiari from January 2022, went from being narrowly majority black VAP to almost majority white VAP. At the same time, the white VAP shares of the Buckhead-based Districts 7 and 8 declined from 73% and 83% to 67% and 74%, respectively. Despite these changes, segregation is still very apparent in Atlanta, with the southwestern Districts 10, 11, 12 being over 85% black.
The main conclusion of the 2020 Census is that while all parts of the city grew, the growth was not evenly distributed. Midtown and the Old Fourth Ward have exploded in population, and the development trend has spilled over into the neighboring Eastside neighborhoods. Strong growth has also occurred in Buckhead. This generally means political power will shift from the south and west towards the north and east.
With Districts 10 and 12 being the most underpopulated, they will have to grow towards the north, pushing the districts they border further up. As a consequence, certain incumbents could end up being forced into the same district, potentially setting up competitive races in 2025.
It’s worth noting that since the current districts were used for the 2021 municipal elections, they will be in use through the end of 2025. That means that Atlanta will be using census data that’s nearly 16 years old, and when the new districts go into effect, they will be based on data that is already nearly six years old. It may be advisable for Atlanta to consider adjusting the schedule of their elections to better align with the decennial release of census data, so citizens are not being deprived of their right to equal representation for an extended period of time.