Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann and House Speaker Jason White have announced their picks to serve on a joint reapportionment and redistricting committee that will begin work in the coming months.
Republican Representative Noah Sanford has been tapped to chair the House’s delegation on the committee. Outlining his priorities for what new maps may look like, he said he’d like to prevent communities from being split across district lines.
“That can make it confusing for voters to know exactly where lines are, and have multiple people representing the same small county,” said Sanford. “Where we can avoid it, I would like to try to do that.”
Sanford adds he looks forward to holding a series of hearings across the state to get public input on the redistricting process.
Bruce Case, assistant state policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Mississippians need to be able to weigh in on how their districts may be redrawn for what could be the fourth time this decade.
“Are they going to tell us how and why they decided to do what they did? Are they going to be open to input from our communities? Because I tell ya’, that’s going to be critical in how confident voters are,” said Case.
Case also expressed concern about how lawmakers will approach redistricting without strict guidelines on considering race. He said the Callais decision blocks portions of the Voting Rights Act that previously had been used to re-draw Mississippi’s districts when courts found them in violation of the law.
House Minority Leader Robert Johnson of Natchez argued Mississippi’s maps have been heavily gerrymandered for years.
“The suggestion that they could do worse than they’ve already done is ludicrous,” said Johnson. “And so, this is not motivated by something Mississippi needs. It’s not even motivated by, in my opinion, by something that the Republican party needs. This is just something that Donald Trump said, ‘let’s do,’ and the state is talking about doing it.”
The first meeting for the Joint Redistricting and Reapportionment Committee is scheduled for Monday, August 3 at the state capitol.
