The Downfall of the County Unit System
The pressure brought by Thrower’s campaign and by the activities of other reformers eventually made the issue unavoidable for the United States Supreme Court. Finally, on March 18, 1963, the county unit system was officially declared unconstitutional in a Supreme Court decision known as Gray v. Sanders. This decision was based on the landmark decision of the previous year, Baker v. Carr, which stated that all citizens’ votes should have equal weight, according to the principle of “one man, one vote.”
In effect, the Democratic Party abandoned the county unit system prior to the Supreme Court decision of 1963. A judicial panel of three federal judges ruled in April 1962 that the county unit system had to be redesigned according to the Baker v. Carr concept of “one man, one vote” principle before the primary of September 1962.
The effects of the abandonment of the county unit system were quickly felt. In 1962, the Augusta-born 37 years-old Carl Sanders was elected governor of Georgia. His election marked the first time Georgia elected a governor from an urban center since Atlantan Hugh Dorsey in 1919. During Sanders’s administration, Atlanta completed its transition from a large southern city to a New South sunbelt metropolis. Sanders worked closely with Mayor Ivan Allen to attract new businesses in the city, helped Atlanta’s acquire a professional football and baseball team, and collaborated with the city government to build numerous new facilities to make Atlanta a premier city for large conventions. Since the abolition of the county unit system, the metropolitan region of Atlanta has always played a critical role in state politics.
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