Lauderdale County supervisors heard from residents about proposed redistricting maps Monday as the county held its public hearing on the changes.

Parker Berry, with Butler Snow LLP, which is helping the county through the redistricting process, said redistricting is not limited to Lauderdale County or Mississippi. While not every district will need to redrawn, he said almost every elected official will need to look at the 2020 Census and see if redistricting is required.

“Every single member of elected office across the entire country has to basically look and see if they need to redistrict when the census results come out every ten years,” he said. “And most do.”

Redistricting is required if the county’s total variance, which is the deviation from the ideal district population size based on the most recent census data, exceeds 10%, Berry said.

The variance is calculated by adding the variances from the largest and smallest districts.

Lauderdale County, he said, had a variance of 17.34% for county supervisor districts and 17.05% for justice court and constable districts.

After establishing that redistricting was required, Berry said Butler Snow and the board of supervisors set criteria to follow to redraw district lines. Among the requirements, he said, was the constitutional ideal of one person, one vote, which says one person’s vote should count the same as another person’s vote.

Additionally, Berry said, the redistricting team wanted to be in compliance with the Voting Rights Act by keeping Lauderdale County’s two minority districts, wanted to draw district lines along physical boundaries and tried to make sure the current supervisors would still live inside their districts.

Since Meridian is the largest population center in Lauderdale County, Berry said most of the changes were done inside the city limits. District 4, which had lost the most population and was 1,348 people under the ideal population size of 14,387, was expanded North from 19th Street to Royal Road and from 37th Street to North Hills.

An additional area around 3rd Street and 24th Avenue was added to District 4 to help square off the lines. Berry said the two-block area was commercial properties and did not have any population.

“There’s zero population in it from the census data,” he said. “It just squares it off.”

District 3, which was the largest district at 1,146 residents, gave most of the population gained by District 4, Berry said. District 5 had no changes.

In Districts 1 and 2, Berry said the area around Meridian High School would be transferred from District 2 to District 1. In the county, he said, a portion of the Dalewood area around Minnow Bucket Road and Toomsuba Road would be taken from District 1 to District 2.

“Why 45 would be the main divider there,” he said.

The redistrict plan, Berry said, would bring the county supervisor district variance down from 17.34 to 2.64.

State Sen. Jeff Tate, who represents part of Lauderdale County in Senate District 33, asked the board of supervisors to consider a change to the proposed district maps. The area bordered by 45th Street on the North side, 40th Street on the South, 35th Avenue on the West and 29th Avenue on the East would be taken from District 1 and added to District 4 under the current plan.

Tate, who chairs the Senate Elections Committee and previously served as an election commissioner in Lauderdale County, said moving that area would result in a split precinct for senate races. Some voters would be in Senate District 33 and some would be in Senate District 32 in the same precinct, he said.

“Split precincts is something that we’re trying to work on in the legislature and something we successfully did in the state senate to make sure that y’all did not have any split within precincts for senate lines,” he said.

Avoiding split precincts as much as possible cuts down on confusion as some voters get one ballot and other voters get a completely different ballot, Tate said. It also cuts down on human error where a poll worker might accidentally give a voter the wrong ballot, he said.

Finally, Tate said, split precincts are more expensive as different ballots have to be ordered to show the correct candidates for each race.

Supervisor Jonathan Wells said he agrees with trying to eliminate as much of the confusion for voters as possible but would need to look at the numbers to see if avoiding the split precinct while complying with the election laws was possible.

“I think you’re right,” he said. “For the voters’ sake, I’d like to keep it as simple as possible.”

Split precincts have previously caused confusion with justice court and constable districts, Circuit Clerk Donna Jill Johnson said. Reducing the number of split precincts was one of the priorities for local elections officials during the redistricting process.

“The nightmare that we’ve lived with these last 10 years is justice court and constable,” she said. “They’ve causes us the worst splits ever.”

Johnson also asked Berry to coordinate with the City of Meridian and school boards as they work through the redistricting process as well. Working together, she said, would also go a long way in reducing split precincts.

Berry said avoiding split precincts as much as possible was considered in redrawing the justice court and constable districts, and Butler Snow would happily go back and see if a solution to the county supervisor districts could be done as well.

Once the board of supervisors approves a redistricting plan, Berry said Butler Snow will begin working with the election commissioners on any necessary changes to voting precincts. Those changes, he said, will need to be completed and notice sent out to voters this fall to allow residents running for county office to qualify beginning January 1.