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Lauderdale County supervisors are beginning the process of redrawing district lines with data from the 2020 census.

In a work session Thursday, the Board of Supervisors heard from Tommie Cardin, with Butler Snow, LLC, about the redistricting process and what is required by law.

“This comes up every 10 years, and it is a result of the census and the census results that took place,” Cardin said. “The most recent census was the 2020 census, and we have the numbers out on that.”

The population of Lauderdale County declined in the 2020 census. Based on the data, Cardin said the ideal population for the five supervisor districts also declined from about 16,000 in 2010 to 14,597.

Each district has to be within 5 percent of the ideal population size based on the 2020 census, Cardin said, with a maximum deviation of 10% countywide.

“What you do is you look at all of your districts, and you take the one that is most overpopulated and the one that’s the most underpopulated and you add those two deviations up,” he said. “If it exceeds 10%, then you need to redraw your lines.”

Lauderdale County is at 16.2%, he said, which is enough to require redistricting but close enough to where redistricting could be achieved without large changes.

“Overall, that’s good because there’s some places their overall maximum deviation is like 30,40%,” he said.

At a district level, Cardin said Districts 1 and 2 are very close to the ideal population size. Both districts have a less than 1% deviation from the ideal population. District 3 is 5.99% over the ideal population size, and District 4 is 5.1% over, he said.

District 4 is the biggest outlier of Lauderdale County’s five districts, and the one to lose the most population. Cardin said the district was below ideal population size by 10.2%.

“It looks like the play is going to be three, four and five in terms of changes that need to be made,” he said.

If the board chooses to contract with Butler Snow for help redistricting, Cardin said the next step would be to sit down with each supervisor and learn about the districts. Then, he said, the firm would draw up a plan, or several plans for the board to consider.

In addition to supervisor districts, the county will also need to redraw justice court and constable districts.

Barring any unforeseen complications, Cardin estimated the redistricting process would take four to six months to complete.