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The Very Racial Gerrymander of Mississippi Senate District 37

How 1,552 votes in one district, and thousands statewide, can


ensure Republican domination of our state senate.


Mississippi was once famous for poll taxes and literacy exams to ensure black people didnt
vote, so white segregationists could easier rule the state. Those methods tampered with the
registration process and drew too much attention from the US Justice Department, resulting in
Voting Rights Act scrutiny for the state for decades. Todays version of the poll tax is the
computer-assisted gerrymander, and it is a preferred method in 2014 for diluting the vote with
surgical precision. Gerrymander in the south has always appealed to the white side of politics,
and today that means Republicans.
Natchez, Mississippi and Mississippi Senate District 37 offer a great view of modern racial
gerrymandering, and that at the hands of two shining stars of the Tea Party movement and The
Standing Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment. Senator Melanie Sojourner,
freshman senator from Natchez and District 37, and Senator Chris McDaniel from Senate
District 42 have been in the news lately for a variety of brow-raising shenanigans, as this duo
attempts to unseat incumbent US Senator Thad Cochran. This is a story of what the Republican
Party and 10 senators of the committee did in 2012, and their combined bending of the idea of
democracy in Mississippi.
Gerrymander is a way of drawing district lines that prevents local majorities from winning
elections. It accomplishes the task by splitting up groups and sending their votes elsewhere to be
counted, or wasted.
Senator Sojourner and Senator Chris McDaniel sat in 2012 on the committee that decided district
lines, and they approved a racial gerrymander that removed 1,552 black voting age citizens from
voting with their Natchez neighbors. Lines were drawn to count these votes with Woodville, in
District 38, south of Natchez.
Gerrymander is often invisible to the voting public, until its too late. If you live in the
predominantly black areas that make up the northwest parts of Natchez and Adams County, you
likely do not even know your senate vote was moved to District 38 for at least the remainder of
the decade. These votes were also essentially thrown
away by packing them onto a district where, black or
white, they could not change the outcome of elections.
The obvious reason for this change was to deny Natchez
residents the ability to elect a Democratic Senator, as
they had done for 30 years. It was done by slicing up the
city and county and essentially discarding the black
votes. This was done not only by Senator Sojourner to
her own district, but by the Republicans who helped to
get her elected and run our state.
Of course, Adams County Democrats who know tend to object to being denied the right to vote
with their home town in senate races, simply for partisan reasons, and ultimately based on race.
The votes sent to District 38 were obviously selected because they were Democratic votes, and
easily seen and selected by the Committee based on race.
Given a majority in the state senate at redistricting time, Republicans proceeded to rig future
elections in their favor using racial gerrymander. Its the Mississippi equivalent of the
permanent Republican majority that was openly sought in the US Congress during the Bush
years.

A Brief History of Mississippi Senate District 37

Mississippi law states that districts must be two things: contiguous, all connected as part of a
single patch of ground, and compact. In citing compactness, the law underscores the fact that
people in one area are best represented along with their local peers, and not by having their votes
sent off elsewhere to count. District 37, and more noticeably District 38, have morphed into an
odd mix of not contiguous and not compact, and the story is interesting. Districts are also
expected to be of a consistent size to advance the concept of one man one vote. This principle
was the subject of a US Supreme Court action.
In the 1980s and early 90s, District 37 included Natchez and Woodville, and the block of
territory in Mississippis extreme southwest corner. It was compact and contiguous. Senator Bob
Dearing, a Democrat, was elected in 1980 to represent the people of the district, and he would
continue representing District 37 until 2011, despite major changes.
The 2000 Census redistricting saw Justice Department scrutiny under the Voting Rights Act.
Justice demanded a remedy to Mississippis habit of denying blacks a proportional place in state
government. The remedy in part for southwest Mississippi was the creation of majority minority
District 38, an intentional gerrymander done at the behest of the Justice Department. Even with
majority minority districts, the makeup of the state senate would still underrepresent blacks
statewide, with 25% black senators until the end of the decade, for a 36% black population.

The redistricting after the 2000 census snaked a narrow neck of ground, at parts all of it in the
Mississippi River, up to Natchez, where extra black votes could be harvested into District 38.
The Justice Department specified a 60% black majority in District 38, and a small area of north
Natchez provided that extra black vote. Precincts were even split to do this with a minimum of
disturbance to Adams County, and District 38 remained several thousand people short of the
ideal district population to avoid disrupting surrounding populations. Voting strengths were not
changed that much, in District 37, and the popular incumbent won easily, up until the 2011
challenge, when 30 year Senator Bob Dearing (D) lost by 451 votes out of a voting age
population of around 43,000.
In 2011, other new Republican Senators were elected and the relatively new Republican majority
accepted the task of redrawing the lines. One intent was evidently to keep themselves in power,
despite what local residents might eventually want. Republican Lieutenant Governors helped
make this happen, because in our state the Lieutenant Governor is the Senate president. One of
those Lieutenant Governors involved is now sitting in the governors office.
Freshman Senator Melanie Sojourner and Senator Chris McDaniel, and 8 other senators, were
appointed to The Standing Joint Legislative Committee on Reapportionment, where they would
redraw the boundaries for their own districts and everyone else, statewide, under the direction of
Republican Senator Merle Flowers. The appointment so early in Sojourners first term was seen
by many as a gesture of trust, and a gift for a newcomer with no experience at governing. One of
her first actions as senator would see her essentially nullify the future votes of those 1,552
constituents.
The committee made an impressive change to District 37 in 2012, with Sojourners approval.
The snakelike projection Justice approved to snare those original black votes in 2002, was
swollen to include most black neighborhoods in Adams County north of Natchez. Another 1,552
blacks of voting age, and few whites, were packed onto the already over 60% voting age
blacks in District 38. That brought the total number of Adams County potential voters voting in
District 38 to 5,381, of which 4,612 were black, and reliably, Democrats. The change the
Republican led committee made in 2012 effectively prevented over 1,500 black voters from
future representation with their city in state senate elections, and as it turns out, that left a Tea
Partier representing Natchez. These changes in Adams County were all for only one seat in the
senate, the seat Sojourner would defend in 2015. Neither population requirements nor a need for
black voters were the reason for the transfer as both districts were within norms.
There are several ways to measure the redistricting to determine if a partisan gerrymander has
occurred. One is comparing the district size to an ideal district. In Mississippis 2000 census
redistricting, lines were established that by 2010 put 52,716 people in District 38 and 55,722 in
District 37. The ideal district size was 57,063, so both districts in 2010 were marginally below
that ideal.
After 2012 redistricting changes, District 38 had swelled over 6,000, to a population of 59,472,
or 4.22% above the new ideal district size, an indicator of a packed district. This swell in
population was not from population growth but was due to changes in district boundaries sought
in Sojourners district. District 37 contained 55,264 people, an actual decrease of 458 citizens,
so there was no need to transfer anyone from District 37. But the new transfer to the packed
District 38 just from Adams County was 1,552 voting age blacks, and a few white voters living
near them. This accounts for the majority of the increase in District 38 above the ideal district
size. There was no real need for District 37 to transfer these voters, nor did District 38 need to
acquire them.
In the end, District 38 would
have more voters than the
ideal district size, by over four
percent. Additionally it would
have almost 3% more black
voting age citizens than the
60% the Justice Department
specified. That number of
packed voters would be
sufficient to make District 37
difficult or impossible for a
Democrat to win.
Additional data confirms that
not only were a large number
of Adams County black voters transferred to District 38, the black voting age population of the
entire District 37 went from 36.9% to 33.4% of the voting age population as more white voters
were added in the east end of the district.. District 37, with the city of Natchez trapped inside,
had been adjusted to reflect a population actually lower than the statewide population percentage
of blacks, which is a fairly monumental task for Natchez.

Measured another way, the final tally on District 38s voting age blacks, was 2.54% above the
60% the Justice Department had sought that equals 1,510 people that need not have been there
to satisfy Justice they were a gerrymander, and meant only to benefit Sojourner and the
Republicans. Mostly rural Franklin and Amite Counties needed the population density of
Natchez to fill out a district of legal size, and the only way to make sure it was politically
sustainable for Republicans was to remove black voters near and in Natchez and use the
remaining population of the city to create a safely Republican district.
Sojourners slim 451 vote victory at the polls in 2011 would be expected to jump to around 1,451
votes in the next election in 2015, after the gerrymander that the committee installed. That would
mean southwest Mississippi would vote in one Democratic State Senator instead of two.
Computer precision of modern gerrymandering tactics means a 3% change in demographics can
also mean nearly 100% chance of ensuring a win, so thats how its done.

How packing a majority minority district turns the feds remedy into destruction
of black votes

When Justice demands a majority minority district, and requires the 60% black voting age
minimum, it offers a special opportunity to sabotage the intent of the order. It is important to
remember, that no matter the remedy on either side, blacks effectively are elected in Mississippi
Senate slots at below their percentage of the population. In modern times, Democratic senators,
both white and black, have generally worked to achieve a figure closer to the population
percentage, and Republicans have sought to work against it, as they did in District 37 in 2012.
A district can be packed above the 60% to essentially destroy black votes. Since the district is
already reliably black, or Democrat, every vote past the 60% is essentially wasted. It will do a
voter no good at all for his vote to be added there -- he cant change election outcomes, and this
is true of either Democratic or Republican voters. In that way their votes can be wasted,
intentionally parked where they will not count in competitive elections..
To game the majority minority district, not only can a district be packed by percentage above the
requested 60% of 18 plus year old blacks, extra black voters above the ideal district size are also
packed from adjoining districts, and make those neighboring districts artificially more white, and
shifted toward Republicans. District 38, after the Republican redistricting, shows results of both
of those methods. So packing can mean that instead of two Democrats attaining office, only one
does. That was the intent and the likely result of the District 37 changes, to make District 37 a
reliably red district, at least for the next 10 years or until the next census, by putting all those
black votes where they would be wasted. District 37 was not the only 2012 example of
redistricting abuse using packing of the percentage of blacks, or swelling the population of voters
in a majority minority district.




Measuring the Republican changes to Mississippis majority minority districts

Counted another way, when the 2012 Redistricting Committee faced the challenge of
redistricting, there were 14 majority minority districts in the state. In 2010, only one of them,
District 29, was larger than the ideal size, and it had a relatively low percentage of black voting
age residents. This illustrates that the previous redistricting in 2002, led by Democratic senators,
did not use violations of district population to accomplish a packing goal. Nor had previous
redistricting given senate posts to more blacks than their population percentage might reasonably
allow, but the state continued to work toward the goal of proportional representation.
After the redistricting effort by the 2012 Republican Senate, there were 15 majority minority
districts, instead of 14, but 9 of them were swelled, or packed, to above the ideal district size of
57,603. Those represent likely accumulations of voters used as the District 37 changes were
used, to ensure Republican control by switching black voters to adjacent districts where their
votes would essentially not count in senatorial elections. Instead of the 1,552 voting age blacks
in the transfer from Adams County, now were talking about 65,524 more voting age blacks
statewide that were sent to majority minority districts by the 2012 Republican plan. Twelve of
the 15 majority minority districts were swelled above the 60% the Justice Department sought,
one with voting age blacks totaling 84.2% of the district. It was a very bad deal for blacks and
Democrats.
One additional majority minority district was added by the 2012 Republican redistricting, but the
total population of the majority minority districts was swelled disproportionately to do it.
Statewide, that additional 65,524 voting age black citizens who were brought into these already
black districts, attain a net gain of only one potential additional Democratic seat. Effectively,
because of the Republican changes to the majority minority districts, the additional single seat
would burn up almost 66,000 potential black votes to acquire it, and become a very expensive
seat for Democrats. To show the value of that many votes, Senator Sojourner won her first
election with only 10,272 votes, meaning that 66,000 voters properly placed could be enough to
elect 6 senators and possibly change the state senate to Democratic control. Republicans
arranged it so that 65,525 black voters moved from other districts only added one Democratic
senator and those votes could not be used in any other election contests.

The Republican plan in 2012 attained much of the increase in populations in the majority
minority districts by being more strict relative to ideal district size. Whereas the first approval
Justice made included districts of at least 60% black, some districts held higher percentages, but
lower than ideal district size. The result still did not overpopulate the senate with black senators.
When offered the opportunity, Republicans swelled these districts, 9 of the 15, to over the ideal
size, and fattened all of them to an amount above the ideal size. By doing so Republicans
removed black voters from other, adjacent districtsthe more black voters that got put into a
majority minority district, the fewer there are in other districts, and that benefits Republicans.
All these changes are essentially to ensure the Republicans retain control of the Senate at the
expense of citizens voting power, and is all done specifically on the basis of race. It was one of
the very first things Republicans did in 2012, and in a true sense, for senatorial elections,
amounted to rendering useless thousands of potential black votes in the state through
intentionally devious math and packing of majority minority districts.
Packing is also used in another, very important way. White Democrats, of which Natchez has
many, are also denied the voting assistance of the now-packed black voters, and so Democrats
are marginalized in 2 ways in the senatorial race. The lines drawn to waste the black votes
carefully retained white Democrats in District 37, in parts of the city of Natchez that contain
them. So both groups are weakened in an open act of divide and conquer. This is not an
accidental result, but is part of the gerrymander process, and explains why there are many more
casualties of gerrymander than the people who are redistricted. One group has votes racially
targeted and rendered essentially useless through packing, and the other group is denied the
alliance with racially targeted voters that were once in their district or city. Once Republicans do
this it can be very difficult to ever get rid of them.
This is probably among the best evidence that Mississippi, under Republican rule, should still be
under the Voting Rights Act scrutiny the Supreme Court removed in 2013. The irony is, the
actual 2012 changes came before the Voting Rights Act supervision was lifted, indicating that
federal scrutiny was never very extreme.

Gerrymander forces us to accept candidates that do not advance our interests

Senator Sojourner is taking increasing criticism regarding her controversial political ambitions
for associate McDaniel, and her Tea Party intransigence in the Senate. Many in Natchez feel that
Sojourners ideological purity issues do her diverse constituents a disservice. The local paper
questions her priorities. Her defiance vote and demeanor in the Senate have won the ire of many
Republicans there and reduced her effectiveness in representing her district. Her protest vote on
a bond issue cost her city 6 million dollars and left them helping to pay for everyone elses
infrastructure improvements. But her participation in a statewide gerrymander and even
allowing redrawing of her own district for personal political gain are probably the worst
infractions and a clear violation of the principles of democracy. Sojourner was elected to protect
the rights of her citizen constituents, not cost them voting power for her own benefit and that of
the Republican Party.
The ultimate problem with Natchez and Adams County having a Tea Party senator, is that she
does not represent a majority in the city or county, the state or the nation. She, and others, helped
rig the game in her favor at the expense of thousands of voters statewide, and over 1,552 locally,
even more damaging when one considers numerous white Democrats that lost allies in voting.
And Sojourner attempted to prevent the city of Natchez and Adams County District 37 voters
from electing a Democratic Senator as they had done for 30 years, for at least a decade.

Ultimately, it was a Party effort, as Sojourner was heavily promoted by national and state
Republican forces who have aided gerrymanders in other places. In a real sense, Senator
Sojourner was the choice of Republicans for this and other tasks, and simply went Tea Party on
the people who got her elected. But she went worse on her constituents in Natchez and Adams
County, most of whom still dont quite understand what she has done.

As far as Republican stewardship of the move toward minority equality in Mississippi, after
subtracting 25,000 black votes for the acquisition of one new seat, blacks and Democrats will
start about 40,000 votes behind in the 2015 senate elections. The aim as always seems to be to
keep minorities and their allies underrepresented as a percentage of the population in state
government.



Joe Collins lives in Mississippi Senate District 37, and writes about southern politics.

Follow Joe Collins on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/joe.collins.311?ref=tn_tnmn

wilkiecollins@hughes.net


sources:

MS Code 5-3-101 (2013)

Mississippi State Legislature, The Standing Joint Legislative Committee on Apportionment Redistricting

Mississippi State Senate Districts, Benchmark Plan, 2002 geography with 2010 population

http://www.msjrc.state.ms.us/pdf/senate_bench.pdf

Mississippi State Senate Redistricting Plan TRP 1 Precleared by USDOJ - 09/14/2012

http://www.maris.state.ms.us/pdf/MS2010SenateDist/TRP_FINAL_REPORT.pdf

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