Mississippi has lost population but will keep its four Congressional Districts and the population shift from rural to metropolitan areas could prompt a redrawing of district lines.
Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann named 10 members of the Mississippi Senate to the Standing Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment and Standing Joint Congressional Redistricting Committee today.
Members include:
• Senator David Parker, 1st Congressional Dist.
• Senator Angela Turner-Ford, 1st Congressional Dist.
• Senator Briggs Hopson, 2nd Congressional Dist.
• Senator Derrick Simmons, 2nd Congressional Dist.
• Senator Josh Harkins, 3rd Congressional Dist.
• Senator Dean Kirby, 3rd Congressional Dist. (Chairman)
• Senator Dennis DeBar, Jr., 4th Congressional Dist.
• Senator Brice Wiggins, 4th Congressional Dist.
• Senator Jeff Tate, Chairman of the Elections Committee
• Senator Hob Bryan, Vice Chairman of the Elections Committee
According to state statute, the Committees must include the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Elections Committee, and two members from each of the state’s congressional districts. Members will be responsible for reapportioning the Legislature and redistricting the state’s four congressional districts after receiving data from the 2020 Decennial Census.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently announced it would deliver redistricting data to all states by Sept. 30, 2021.
The Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the House will call an organizational meeting of the Joint Committees to begin work on redrawing the maps in the near future.
Mississippi has not redrawn district lines since 2013 and those changes were not much different from the 2003 map, although it did push the Second Congressional District north and farther west.
Redistricting is the process by which new congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn.
Each of Mississippi's four United States Representatives and 174 state legislators are elected from political divisions called districts. United States Senators are not elected by districts, but by the states at large. District lines are redrawn every 10 years following completion of the United States census.
The federal government stipulates that districts must have nearly equal populations and must not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity.
