What district are you in?
That’s not always an easy question to answer. Are we talking House District? Senate? Supervisor? School board? Alderman? What district do you mean?
Every one of those is different, but except for school attendance, district lines are based on the principle of “one man, one vote.” This principle was applied by the US Supreme Courts in deciding Wesberry v Sanders in 1964. The short version of the ruling is that congressional districts must be apportioned based on population, and congressional district lines must be drawn with the goal of making each district as nearly equal in population as possible based on the most recent census data. In practice, that means that congressional district lines must be redrawn every ten years. Under Mississippi state law, many other electoral districts have to be redrawn for the same reason.
The Mississippi House and Senate draw their district lines. The County Supervisors do theirs. The school boards do their own. The boards of aldermen do theirs. None of those groups have any input into how any other board draws their district lines.
So why am I in Supervisor District Three and School Board District Two? How come those are different?
In a word, Senatobia. Senatobia has its own school municipal school district. The people who live there vote for their own school board. People in Tate County outside the Senatobia district vote for an entirely different group of school board members. Senatobia district voters don’t vote for Tate County School Board, TCSD voters don’t vote for Senatobia school board members.
Tate County school board members approve Tate district lines, Senatobia board members approve Senatobia district lines. County supervisors have no say in how those lines are drawn.
However, every voter in Tate County is counted for county supervisor districts. The folks who live and vote in Senatobia vote in Tate County elections. For that reason, they have to be counted and divided up so that the districts have the same number of votes. That’s why four of the five supervisor districts include parts of Senatobia. None of the Tate County School Board districts include any part of Senatobia.
So, who draws these districts? Both the TCSD board and Tate County Supervisors hired consultants to recommend their district lines based on 2020 census data. The school board approved their districts. The supervisors approved their districts. Neither group had any input on the districts of the others, nor did they consider where any other group’s lines might be.
That’s why two voters in a supervisor district might be in different school board districts, different house districts, and different state senate districts.
I know one more thing about districts.
I’m glad I’m not the one who has to draw the lines.
