County wants precinct redrawn

The legislative map changes might not be over for Columbia County. There's one more detail to take care of, county election officials said.

Elections Director Deborah Marshall has submitted a request to the U.S. Department of Justice to avoid having a split precinct that was shown in the redrawn political maps for the state House.

The map, approved by a three-judge panel, extends House District 119 over the Richmond County line into Martinez.

The change, Marshall said, also showed the splitting of the precinct that votes at Savannah Rapids Pavilion.

"Normally, when they draw the House and Senate lines, they try to keep it along," she said.

Her office is requesting that instead of the precinct being split up between two districts, residents there who live in the House District 118 lines instead vote at Stevens Creek Elementary School.

For the affected residents, the school was their previous polling location, Marshall said.

"I can't move them until the Department of Justice says I can move them," Marshal said, adding that she expects a response to her request within 60 days.

The three-judge panel ruled in February Georgia's 2001 redistricting plans for the House and Senate violated the one person, one vote principle and ordered new maps.

The redrawn versions has an additional House seat in Columbia County but one less senator on the delegation. The House seat now held by Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, extends throughout Lincoln County and into the eastern part of Wilkes County.

The new House seat, which Rep. Sue Burmeister, R-Augusta now holds, moves into Martinez taking over part of the area held by Rep. Ben Harbin, R-Evans, whose district pushes farther west to Windmill Plantation.

Also, the Senate map bunches the district of Sen. Joey Brush, R-Appling, in mostly whole counties around Columbia County. His current district snakes through 12 counties to south of Atlanta.