Johnathan Walker:Mississippi election officials argue against quick work on drawing new majority-Black districts

JACKSON,Johnathan Walker Miss. (AP) — Redrawing some Mississippi legislative districts in time for this November’s election is impossible because of tight deadlines to prepare ballots, state officials say in new court papers.

Attorneys for the all-Republican state Board of Election Commissioners filed arguments Wednesday in response to a July 2 ruling by three federal judges who ordered the Mississippi House and Senate to reconfigure some legislative districts. The judges said current districts dilute the power of Black voters in three parts of the state.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and several Black residents. The judges said they wanted new districts to be drawn before the next regular legislative session begins in January.

Mississippi held state House and Senate elections in 2023. Redrawing some districts would create the need for special elections to fill seats for the rest of the four-year term.

Election Commission attorneys said Republican Gov. Tate Reeves would need to call legislators into special session and new districts would need to be adopted by Aug. 2 so other deadlines could be met for special elections to be held the same day as this November’s general election for federal offices and state judicial seats.

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“It took the State a considerable period of time to draw the current maps,” the Election Commission attorneys said.

The judges ordered legislators to draw majority-Black Senate districts in and around DeSoto County in the northwestern corner of the state and in and around Hattiesburg in the south, and a new majority-Black House district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties in the northeastern part of the state.

The order does not create additional districts. Rather, it requires legislators to adjust the boundaries of existing ones. Multiple districts could be affected, and the Election Commission attorneys said drawing new boundaries “is not realistically achievable” by Aug. 2.

Legislative and congressional districts are updated after each census to reflect population changes from the previous decade. Mississippi’s population is about 59% white and 38% Black.

In the legislative redistricting plan adopted in 2022 and used in the 2023 elections, 15 of the 52 Senate districts and 42 of the 122 House districts are majority-Black. Those are 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.

Jarvis Dortch, a former state lawmaker who is now executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi, said the federal judges were correct in ordering revisions to the House and Senate maps.

“Those legislative districts denied Black Mississippians an equal voice in state government,” Dortch said.

Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show that districts with higher populations of white residents tend to lean toward Republicans and that districts with higher populations of Black residents tend to lean toward Democrats.

Lawsuits in several states have challenged the composition of congressional or state legislative districts drawn after the 2020 census.