Turning Point by Jimmy Carter

Turning Point by Jimmy Carter provides a look into his first experience with politics as he runs for the Georgia state senate in 1962. He believed it was possible to change the direction his home state was headed, specifically focusing on education. Instead of having a run-of-the-mill experience in democracy, he faced election corruption by those in power and legal challenges up until the moment he was finally sworn in as state senator.
The Supreme Court case of Baker v. Carr established what was known as the “one man, one vote” rule, where all votes were ruled to carry equal weight in elections. In Georgia, Carter benefited from the decisions that were handed down in the case. In the 1962 elections, he lost the Democratic primary in his run for the Georgia senate. However, he requested a recount of the votes and was given the win for the election due to the rights that were granted in the Supreme Court’s decision. The decision also affected Carter due to the fact that there had to be a reapportion of at least one house of the General Assembly on the basis of population. In more ways than one, this change could affect any decisions Carter would make as a member of the Georgia senate.
Carter states in his book that, when there was a question concerning the reapportionment of the state Senate, he had made his decision to run as a candidate for the senate. He had made the decision that if there was a lack of new information regarding the reapportionment, he would place a notice in a newspaper announcing his campaign. Originally, his career had him working on a school board. However, he knew it would be many years before any significant changes could be made to the educational system and he had made the decis...

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...ted in Quitman County elections and which would have stolen his chance to run for state senate, all orchestrated by Hurst, it’s strange to think about how he might have never eventually become president. It could have been he became disillusioned with the world of politics and decided to just continue on his life as a peanut farmer.
While his memoir is over 20 years old, I was curious concerning whether Georgia has continued to be a two-party state or whether they have gone back to being a one-party state. I found that, after 2002, Republicans began to control the state elections in Georgia due to their hold on voters in the rural south. While Republicans have dominated now dominated the Democrats in Georgia elections, it doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t still compromise and work together to help create more opportunities for their underprivileged residents.