AJC reports:

An unusual voting rights victory is delaying elections for Georgia’s utility regulators until next year, allowing the Republican-led General Assembly to make new rules for Public Service Commission elections but giving Democrats a better chance to break the GOP’s stranglehold on the panel.

The outcome is the result of a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court after a judge ruled that the election couldn’t go on under Georgia’s system of allowing all voters to choose members of the PSC.

The case highlighted racial disparities on the bureaucratic but important board that sets electricity and natural gas rates for much of the state. In its 143-year history, just one Black commissioner has won election in a state where white voters always outnumber other races.