NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors are preparing to adopt their redistricting plan as they get ready for the elections they’ll be running in next year.
Adams County’s political-map changes are concentrated in areas to move some voters now represented by Kevin Wilson into the electoral district represented by Angela Hutchins. Lines are being redrawn to also shift a few hundred voters from Warren Gaines’ supervisory district to the one currently represented by Ricky Gray. Wes Middleton’s district remains the same.
The five county supervisors have been working on their new district lines in recent months with redistricting consultant Toby Sanford, who presented proposed electoral maps on Monday for consideration. They must remap the political borders because population data from the 2020 Census shows four districts are imbalanced and need to be realigned.
Electoral districts are required by law to have about the same number of people in the county of about 28,600 residents. This includes the city of Natchez with about 14,500 people.
The redistricting map supervisors said they’ll implement focuses largely on changes in three areas: central Adams County south of Liberty Road to Ogden Road and sections west of U.S. 61 north that include Morgantown and neighborhoods centered by Vaughn Drive.
The supervisors have been remapping their political borders because population data shows four districts are imbalanced and need to be realigned. Electoral districts are required by law to have about the same number of people.
Hutchins’ District 3 is to expand south to take in populations in parts of Wilson’s District 2. Wilson’s old district had too many people while Hutchins had too few.
Wilson’s district encompasses south-central Adams County while Hutchins’ area covers the county’s southeastern sector.
Gray’s District 4 in northwest Adams County had too few people, so the Board of Supervisors’ plan has his constituency expanded into Gaines’ District 5, which is northeastern Adams County and was overpopulated. The change has District 4 taking in sections of Morgantown and populations west to extend to Martin Luther King Drive with Vaughn Drive in the middle.
The new lines were fashioned to ensure supervisors are not living in the same district so they’re not pitted against each other in their re-election bids.
Middleton’s District 1 has nearly the optimal amount of people and doesn’t require population shifts. It spreads over southwest Adams County.
The new supervisory districts each cover parts of the city and preserve their old racial alignments: Adams County Districts 3, 4 and 5 are predominantly Black while Districts 1 and 2 are mostly White.
While Sanford presented three maps for consideration Monday at a public hearing, supervisors said they’ve already settled on the one to approve at their next meeting, which is scheduled for December.
There’s a March 1 deadline for candidates to file to run in next August’s party primaries and the November 2023 general election.
The U.S Census shows Adams County’s population has declined since 2010 by nearly 2,800 people – down to about 29,500. That official number includes about 900 people incarcerated in 2020 at the CoreCivic private prison in Adams County. The prison population was not counted in redrawing the district lines.
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