Mississippi must move quickly on a court-ordered redistricting, say voting rights attorneys

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi should work quickly to fulfill the court-ordered redrawing of some legislative districts to ensure more equitable representation for Black residents, attorneys for voting rights groups said in a new court filing Friday.

The attorneys also said it's important to hold special elections in the reconfigured state House and Senate districts on Nov. 5 — the same day as the general election for federal offices and some state judicial posts.

Having special legislative elections in 2025 "would burden election administrators and voters and would likely lead to low turnout if not outright confusion,” wrote the attorneys for the Mississippi NAACP and several Black residents in a lawsuit challenging the composition of state House and Senate districts drawn in 2022.

Attorneys for the all Republican state Board of Election Commissioners said in court papers filed Wednesday that redrawing some legislative districts in time for this November’s election is impossible because of tight deadlines to prepare ballots.

Three federal judges on July 2 ordered Mississippi legislators to reconfigure some districts, finding that the current ones dilute the power of Black voters in three parts of the state. The judges said they want 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.

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.

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.

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.