UGA historian says proportional representation could reshape redistricting, Black political influence in Georgia

For more than half a century, historian James C. Cobb has studied how the South changes and how it resists change.

From the collapse of Jim Crow to the expansion of Black political participation under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), Cobb has traced the forces that reshaped Georgia's economy, population and politics. 

Today, as states across the South enter another consequential period of redistricting, he is lending his name to an effort aimed at changing not just where congressional boundaries are drawn, but how Americans elect members of Congress in the first place.

Cobb, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Georgia, is among more than 500 scholars who sent an open letter Wednesday urging Congress to move toward proportional representation in elections for the U.S. House.

The proposal emerged after the Supreme Court's April decision in Lousiana v. Callais, which struck down a Louisiana congressional map containing two majority-Black districts and weakened how the VRA may be used in redistricting cases. The 6-3 ruling has intensified political battles over race, representation and election maps throughout the South, as November midterms fast approach.

For Cobb, those fights cannot be understood solely through the politics of one election.

"...you tend to focus in on the particular situation on the ground wherever you're looking," Cobb told CBS News Atlanta. "And you don't do enough to sort of connect it to what's going on in the rest of the country -- or the rest of the world for that matter."

Cobb, who served as the 1999 president of the Southern Historical Association, says understanding Southern history in the context of America's broader story, produces a much clearer picture for both.

Cobb is the B. Phinizy Spalding Professor Emeritus at UGA. His books include Georgia Odyssey and The South and America Since World War II. Notably, he has also served as an expert witness in voting rights cases across the South.

That combination of historical study and courtroom experience shaped his decision to join the scholar's campaign, he says.

A different way of translating votes into power

Most U.S. congressional elections operate under a winner-takes-all system. Each district elects just one representative, and the candidate receiving the most votes wins the seat, even when nearly half the district supported someone else.

Proportional representation would seek to translate the overall share of votes received by candidates or parties into comparable share of representation.

"It amounts to sharing the vote according to the percentage of vote received instead of a winner-take-all situation, which is what we've got now," Cobb said.

Under one possible model, a state could combine several existing congressional districts into larger, multi-member districts. Rather than electing one person from each district, voters could choose among candidates competing for several available seats.

Georgia currently has 14 congressional districts. Cobb said the state could theoretically create fewer, larger districts, with each one electing multiple representatives.

"You could have a vote where the Georgia delegation in Congress more accurately represents the actual sentiment of the voters," he said. "Georgia is a classic example." The state's closely divided electorate makes it a particularly useful illustration, Cobb said.

Georgia has produced a series of razor-thin statewide elections, while the partisan composition of its congressional delegation and General Assembly is also shaped by where district lines are placed.

"If you're elected by 500 votes, you're still elected," Cobb said. "It doesn't matter that you only got 500 more votes than your opponent."

With proportional representation, he said, the final delegation could more closely resemble the political preferences of the state as a whole.

"Then you come out with a more representative result of the sentiments of the electorate in this state or any state," Cobb said.

Giving more voters a reason to participate and stay engaged

Cobb's argument is that the potential impact could extend far beyond which party wins more seats.

In districts dominated by one political party, voters belonging to the minority party may enter election after election believing the outcome has already been decided Cobb said.

In some parts of Georgia, that may mean Democrats who see little possibility of winning. In other states or districts, Republican voters may experience the same political isolation.

"Voters who are in a minority in a state, whether they be a racial minority or just because of partisan preference, they're continually challenged to find a reason to go vote because they know they're not going to get anything out of it," he said. "One of the great advantages is it gives voters a greater stake in staying involved, staying engaged with politics and paying attention to what the people who've been put in office are doing."

The concept is not entirely foreign to American elections. Several large cities adopted versions of proportional representation during the Progressive Era between the 1900s and 30s as reformers attempted to break the control of urban political machines.

Cincinnati and New York City were among the jurisdictions that experimented with it. Cambridge, Massachusetts, continues to use a proportional form of ranked-choice voting for its City Council and School Committee elections.

"It produced, in general, a more — again, little 'd' democratic — result in terms of representation in the city government," Cobb said.

But those systems also generated opposition from political organizations that lost influence under the new rules.

"The people who were dislodged from power didn't like it," Cobb said. 

That history underscores one of the movement's most significant obstacles: Political parties and elected officials who benefit from the existing system have little incentive to replace it.

"If a party absolutely controls politics in a state, they're not looking to change anything," Cobb said. "You're going to get a sort of guaranteed, built-in hostility to the idea."

Race, party and the legacy of the Voting Rights Act 

Cobb's concern about the current system is inseparable from the history of Black voting rights in the South.

He described the civil rights era and its immediate aftermath as one of the most consequential periods In Southern history, particularly because the VRA of 1965 enfranchised Black residents who had been systematically exlcuded from elections.

"The Voting Rights Act enfranchised so many Black people who could not vote in the South, across the South and certainly In Georgia," Cobb said. "The changes that brought have always fascinated me."

In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated the formula used to determine which jurisdictions were subject to the Voting Rights Act's federal preclearance requirement. Before that ruling, states and communities with documented histories of voting discrimination were generally required to receive federal approval before implementing certain election changes.

Cobb said that history is essential to understanding why disputes over race and redistricting remain so contentious.

"You're looking at centuries of racial discrimination in certain parts of the South, all sorts of discrimination, but certainly political discrimination as well, against Black people," he said.

His concerns deepened in 2019, when the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of federal courts.

Because Black voters in Georgia and much of the South overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates, Cobb said the distinction between partisan and racial vote dilution can be far less clear in practice.

"If you're saying, 'Oh, well, we're not disenfranchising Black people, we're disenfranchising Democrats,' it's the same thing," Cobb said. "That's the effect of it."

The recent Callais ruling added urgency to those concerns.

Georgia at the center of a changing South

The debate arrives as Georgia continues to undergo demographic, economic and political transformation.

Cobb says he's currently revising Georgia Odyssey, his history of the state. Its previous edition was published in 2008 before Georgia became one of the nation's most closely watched political battlegrounds.

"Trying to cover everything that's happened over the last 18 years in Georgia and I'm telling you, it is a heck of a challenge," he said.

"There has been so much that's happened that has just transformed the state in so many ways, in terms of in-migration, in terms of economic advances. It's staggering almost to begin to try to do justice to it."

The state's transformation has placed Georgia near the center of the post-Callais redistricting debate.

Gov. Brian Kemp previously said the Supreme Court ruling would require Georgia to adopt new electoral maps before the 2028 election cycle. He later called lawmakers into a special session, although Georgia House leaders ultimately said they would not redraw the maps during that session... for now.

Republican leaders have described the ruling as an opportunity to return to principles such as compactness, county boundaries and communities of interest. Democrats and voting rights organizations have warned that new maps could diminish Black political influence.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock has also called for congressional investigations into whether states intentionally used redistricting to dilute the power of Black voters.

"Across the Deep South, partisan actors have manipulated their maps to silence the voices of Black voters," Warnock said while announcing the proposal. 

The decision found Louisiana's creation of a second majority-Black congressional district relied too heavily on race. Supporters of the ruling say states should follow traditional redistricting principles and should not sort voters primarily according to race. 

Critics argue the decision makes it harder to remedy maps that weaken minority voting power. 

Cobb sees a dangerous imbalance in allowing aggressive partisan mapmaking while restricting efforts to preserve Black representation.

"It's just sleight of hand for reducing the political impact of minorities," he said. 

An idea with formidable political obstacles

Cobb readily acknowledges that proportional representation is not a simple cure for gerrymandering.

Different versions of the system would produce different election rules. Policymakers would need to decide how large multi-member districts should be, how candidates qualify, how votes are counted and how seats are distributed.

"There are so many ways to try it, so many possible approaches," Cobb said. "The details of implementation can get to be pretty murky if you're not very, very careful."

Supporters would also have to explain a system unfamiliar to many American voters. 

CBS News Atlanta asked Cobb how he thinks proportional representation could be implemented.

"The biggest hurdle for people who favor it is doing what I'm probably struggling a little bit to do now — just sort of getting people to conceive of how it would operate on the ground if it were implemented," Cobb said.

Even then, Congress would have to approve changes that could threaten the political security of many of its own members.

"It's a very clearly idealistic, noble purpose," Cobb said. "But because it involves politics and political decisions, politicians are going to have to quit thinking that just because the virtue of some proposal should be self-evident, that's all it will take to get it enacted."

"It doesn't work that way." Cobb does not expect an immediate overhaul. He described the letter as an attempt to establish a "beachhead" in a much longer campaign.

"It'll be a while, at best, before I think we're going to see any real movement to make this a reality," he said.

Still, he believes the proposal forces the country to confront a fundamental question: Should political representation reflect only who wins inside lines drawn by state legislatures, or should it more closely reflect the voters themselves?

For a historian who has spent his career studying the long struggle over race and power in the South, that question is not abstract. It is part of a continuing history, one that Cobb believes journalists must make visible.

"There's not enough background or context," he said of modern redistricting coverage. "I think seeing that history helps people fully grasp what's going on."