Readers write

Redistricting has become a predictable power grab, with zero principles beyond partisan advantage. Drawing maps around race made sense in 1965. In 2026, mixed-race is the fastest-growing demographic in America. Exploiting that category for partisan gain is an anachronism.

Imagine a world where the fight isn’t about who controls the pen, but where a nonpartisan civil service function draws the maps using shared, transparent principles: compactness, equal population, geographic continuity, partisan fairness, and incumbency neutrality. AI tools can optimize for all of these with no thumb on the scale.

New York and Iowa have both shown that this is possible. Partisans on both sides hated the results. That’s how you know the approach works.

PAUL MILLER, ALPHARETTA

GOP eager to dilute minority voting power

When the conservatives on the Supreme Court continued their onslaught against the Voting Rights Act, they must have ignored Georgia.

Republican legislators have already assaulted Georgia voters with two rounds of gerrymandering this decade. A federal judge threw out the GOP’s initial maps because they were racially discriminatory against African Americans.

When the judge ordered them to redo the maps, they made a mockery of his order by engaging in a second round of gerrymandering, especially targeting Democrats in metro Atlanta.

These shameful acts didn’t take place in the 1950s. They took place just three years ago.

Republican politicians in the South are already champing at the bit to aggressively dilute minority voting power. Gov. Brian Kemp has declared that there will be yet another redistricting before the 2028 election. And yet another chance for politicians to pick the winners in elections, rather than the voters.

With the Supreme Court’s decision and Trump’s mid-decade redistricting madness, all of the evils of gerrymandering will be on steroids.

DON HACKNEY, ATLANTA