Census first step in redistricting

Emily Wagster Pettus
March 16, 2010

AP ANALYSIS:

Census first step in redistricting

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS

Associated Press Writer

If you live in coastal Mississippi, do you want your vote to carry the same weight as the vote of someone living in the Appalachian foothills near Corinth?

How about if you live in the tiny Delta town of Alligator - should your vote count less than the vote of someone living in one of those spiffy new high-rise apartments in downtown Jackson?

U.S. Census forms are hitting mailboxes this month, and officials will use the updated population numbers when they reconfigure district lines for political offices, all with the goal of upholding the standard of one-person, one-vote.

Mississippi lawmakers will redraw the lines of the 122 districts in the state House and 52 districts in the state Senate.

And unless state lawmakers get tied in knots and abdicate their responsibility to the federal courts, as they did a decade ago, they're also supposed to reconfigure the lines of Mississippi's U.S. House districts.

Local government officials will get to redraw local district lines. City councils are in charge of municipal districts, and boards of supervisors are in charge of county districts.

Census figures probably won't be available until late 2010 or early 2011. Under state law, candidates' qualifying deadline for state legislative seats would be June 1, 2011.

Even if Gov. Haley Barbour calls a special session for redistricting late this year - and he has said he might - lawmakers would still have to overcome significant obstacles to agree on a new plan. The process won't be quick or easy.

Population shift inland

Legislators will have to account for populations that have shifted inland because of Hurricane Katrina. Coastal officials won't be willing to turn loose of any power because representation equals strength equals money. Expect to hear the argument that a loss of seaside population is only temporary, even five years after the monster storm, and that people eventually plan to return to their old homesteads.

Legislators will have to carve out more state House and Senate districts for north Mississippi's DeSoto County. The bedroom community of Memphis, Tenn., has been the fastest growing county in this state for years.

Putting more districts in and around DeSoto, though, will mean other parts of the state will lose legislative seats. Rural areas with stagnant population numbers could suffer.

Lawmakers will also have to take steps not to dilute black voting representation - and that's a challenge, given that many of the majority-black districts are in the impoverished rural Delta, which has had trouble keeping a steady population level as people seek their economic futures elsewhere.

History of discrimination

Because of Mississippi's history of racial discrimination, the U.S. Justice Department must approve any changes to the voting system. Lawmakers will readily tell you that it's difficult to know how long Justice will examine a redistricting map before giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Redrawing the congressional districts, at least, should be easier this time because Mississippi won't be losing a seat in the U.S. House.

After the 2000 Census, Mississippi lost one of its five districts because the state had grown more slowly than other states during the 1990s. Under a plan approved by federal judges, the two congressmen with the least seniority - Republican Chip Pickering and Democrat Ronnie Shows - saw most of their districts combined into a single Republican-leaning district. Pickering and Shows ran against each other in 2002, and Pickering prevailed.