Catoosa County Attorney Clifton “Skip” PattyRINGGOLD, Ga. — A legacy of the civil rights movement has put a few wrinkles in Catoosa County’s decision to assign 200 residents to a different voting district.
The county is bumping up against Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which since 1965 has required all states in the former Confederacy to get clearance from the U.S. Department of Justice before redrawing voting districts.
Disenfranchising minority voters isn’t an issue in Catoosa, County Attorney Skip Patty said.
“I doubt if there are any,” Patty said, referring to minority voters in the two voting districts in question. Minorities make up “less than 2 percent of voters in the whole county,” he said.
Still, the federal agency never signed off on Catoosa County’s plan to move a little more than 200 voters from school board and County Commission District 1 on the county’s west side to District 4 in the south of the county.