2012 Republican gerrymander of state Senate districts reduced black and Democratic voting power statewide. Senate District 37 Senator Melanie Sojourner is a beneficiary and committee member who along with Senator Chris McDaniel and others helped institute these changes.
This expose' details the way it was done in the District 37 gerrymander, and the changes statewide that would affect nearly 66,000 black voters and their Democratic allies.
This is a partisan but accurate assessment of a very blatant individual gerrymander and offers a way to look at the larger changes. The first election governed by these changes is in 2015, so a great many people don't know they have happened.
This is not a final draft as there are a few typos. The information is sound.
2012 Republican gerrymander of state Senate districts reduced black and Democratic voting power statewide. Senate District 37 Senator Melanie Sojourner is a beneficiary and committee member who along with Senator Chris McDaniel and others helped institute these changes.
This expose' details the way it was done in the District 37 gerrymander, and the changes statewide that would affect nearly 66,000 black voters and their Democratic allies.
This is a partisan but accurate assessment of a very blatant individual gerrymander and offers a way to look at the larger changes. The first election governed by these changes is in 2015, so a great many people don't know they have happened.
This is not a final draft as there are a few typos. The information is sound.
2012 Republican gerrymander of state Senate districts reduced black and Democratic voting power statewide. Senate District 37 Senator Melanie Sojourner is a beneficiary and committee member who along with Senator Chris McDaniel and others helped institute these changes.
This expose' details the way it was done in the District 37 gerrymander, and the changes statewide that would affect nearly 66,000 black voters and their Democratic allies.
This is a partisan but accurate assessment of a very blatant individual gerrymander and offers a way to look at the larger changes. The first election governed by these changes is in 2015, so a great many people don't know they have happened.
This is not a final draft as there are a few typos. The information is sound.
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