Even as they were routed on the Senate floor on Thursday, and Republicans rammed through three bills designed to hamstring the Fulton County Commission, Democrats declared they had something to smile about.

“A bridge too far,” was the most popular phrase on Democratic lips as the chamber adjourned.

The three House bills in question were:

H.B. 171, which would redraw Fulton commission districts and put two south Fulton Democrats in the same district. Bill Edwards and Emma Darnell will have to run against each other.

H.B. 443, which would make Fulton’s chief magistrate judge an elected position, rather than the appointee of state court judges. Under this measure, the governor — right now Republican Nathan Deal — would appoint the next chief magistrate to a four-year term. That would likely give a GOP appointee the advantage of incumbency in the nonpartisan post before elections begin.

Finally, there was H.B. 347, a bill aimed at the Registration and Elections Board, which came under scrutiny last year when mismanagement caused more Fulton voters to use paper ballots than the rest of the state combined. The fix: allow Fulton’s state legislators, rather than the County Commission, to pick the board’s chairman. That would likely make the board 3-2 Republican rather than 3-2 Democratic.

All this would all happen in an overwhelmingly Democratic county that is 60 percent non-white.

From the point of view of Democrats, the last bill, H.B. 347, was the most important. And from a legal standpoint, the most revealing protest came from state Sen. Jason Carter, D-Decatur:

“The next thing you do is pack a Fulton delegation with people from outside Fulton County…Then you give power to that gerrymandered delegation over the elections commission. At some point, someone’s going to say you’ve gone too far.

“And then we’ll have another bill tomorrow, and another bill the next day. And we’re doing this at the point of dramatic threats. One of the things the Justice Department is going to look at is, did we follow the normal legislative procedure? Judging by what I saw yesterday, it’s anything but normal.

“You had people all over this state saying, ‘Have Republicans in this state gone crazy.’ And I don’t know the answer.”

Carter’s speech from the well requires some explanation.

The basis for Republican deconstruction of Fulton County rests on the 2011 redistricting session. In the House and Senate, slivers of Republican districts in neighboring regions were drawn into Fulton County in order to create a GOP majority in the Fulton legislative delegation. Legislative delegations control passage of state laws governing that county.

Here’s a piece by the AJC’s Johnny Edwards and David Wickert that goes into the details.

When legislative districts were presented to the U.S. Justice Department for approval – as required by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act – Democrats declined to protest the GOP delegation packing.

By law, legislative delegations are only advisory bodies, it was determined. They had no real power.

But H.B. 347 changes that. With the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal, the Fulton legislative delegation will be given real, statutory authority over the county’s election committee. Republicans, Carter explained afterwards, may have just provided Democrats the leg they need to stand on in front of a federal judge and mount a challenge to GOP delegation packing.