Mississippi officials say there is not enough time to select majority-black districts

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Redrawing some Mississippi state House districts before the November election is unimaginable due to tight deadlines for preparing ballots, state officials say in latest court documents.

Attorneys for the state’s all-Republican Board of Election Commissioners filed arguments Wednesday in response to a July 2 ruling by three federal judges that ordered the Mississippi House and Senate to reconfigure some voting districts. The judges said the present districts dilute the facility of black voters in three parts of the state.

The ruling got here in a 2022 lawsuit filed by the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and several other black residents. The justices said they wanted the brand new districts to be drawn before the subsequent regular legislative session begins in January.

Mississippi has House and Senate elections in 2023. Redrawing some district boundaries would require special elections to fill the remaining four-year terms.

Election Commission attorneys said Republican Gov. Tate Reeves would have to call lawmakers right into a special session and latest districts would have to be adopted by Aug. 2 so other deadlines may very well be met so the special election may very well be held on the identical day because the November general elections for federal and state judicial offices.

“The state took a long time to develop the current maps,” Electoral Commission lawyers said.

The justices ordered lawmakers to draw majority-black districts in DeSoto County, within the state’s northwest corner, and Hattiesburg County and its surrounding southern corner, and to create a brand new majority-black district in Chickasaw and Monroe counties within the northeastern a part of the state.

The order does not create additional districts. Instead, it requires lawmakers to adjust the boundaries of existing districts. That could affect multiple districts, and Election Commission attorneys have said drawing latest 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 redistricting plan adopted in 2022 and utilized in the 2023 elections, 15 of 52 Senate districts and 42 of 122 House districts have a black majority. That’s 29% of Senate districts and 34% of House districts.

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Jarvis Dortch, a former state lawmaker who is now executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi, said federal judges were right to order the redrawing of House and Senate district maps.

“These voting districts deny black Mississippians an equal voice in state government,” Dortch said.

Historical voting patterns in Mississippi show that precincts with more white residents are more likely to go Republican, and precincts with more black residents are more likely to go Democratic.

Lawsuits are underway in several states difficult the composition of congressional or state legislature districts drawn after the 2020 census.