Jackson Free Press

The Mississippi Republican Party likely will contest a three-judge panel's decision to impose the Mississippi House of Representatives' redistricting map as the official House election map for 2011.

The panel decision favors a Democrat-led House Apportionment and Elections Committee request to use the disputed redistricting map as the interim court-ordered plan for the 2011 elections. But the Republican Party said the map is not legally defensible last week.

"Like a parricide suing to collect his parent's life insurance, the ... House Committee asks this court to order into effect a redistricting plan ... that it could not sell to the Mississippi Senate," the Republican Party wrote in an April 29 response opposing the House redistricting map.

The House and Senate must each approve its own redistricting map and then submit both maps to the opposite chamber for approval during the legislative session. Traditionally, the House and Senate approved the opposite chamber's plan without pushback as a kind of "gentlemen's agreement," according to House Speaker Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi.

This year, however, at the urging of Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, who is running for governor, the Republican-dominated Senate refused multiple times to approve the House plan. Bryant argued that the House plan does not create enough new majority-Republican districts in the House to reflect population growth in conservative districts over the last 10 years. Bryant said in March that he wanted more Republicans in the House to elect a Republican House Speaker, and that the Senate's acceptance of the House-approved plan would make that impossible.

"This means not another Republican would get elected to the House of Representatives for the next decade," Bryant said at a March 8 appearance at Eudora Welty Library.

The Mississippi Republican Party claimed that an alternative redistricting plan it submitted to the House for a vote last month "provides no partisan advantage to either party"; however, a majority of the House voted down that plan and continued backing the Senate-rejected House plan.

House leaders argue that the state needs a fair number of majority-black districts to reflect the state's high proportion of African Americans. Blacks, however, tend to vote Democratic in Mississippi, and a clear majority of Democratic House members would complicate Bryant's crusade for a GOP speaker. With a majority of the Senate voting in line with Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, McCoy and his personally appointed House committee leaders have been the only voice of opposition to hyper-conservative legislation, such as a proposed 2011 appropriation bill seeking to cut public K-12 education funding by about $50 million.

After the Senate refused to approve the House map a second time last month, the NAACP filed a suit in federal court, demanding the courts take redistricting out of the hands of the combative Mississippi Legislature and impose a map reflecting the state's large black population for the 2011 elections. The NAACP offered its preference of either the House map, or a separate map it devised.

Like the NAACP, the three-judge panel wants an interim plan in place before the June 1 qualification deadline for Mississippi House of Representatives and the Mississippi Senate candidates. Anybody with an issue against the decision must bring their argument to a May 10 hearing before the panel in Jackson. NAACP attorney Carroll Rhodes, who would not comment on the Firday decision, may not oppose the court's decision, having stated last month that the House plan contained more majority-black districts than the GOP's alternative plan.

The GOP, however, declared last week that the House plan Bryant coaxed the Senate to reject is "not (a) legislative plan to which the court should defer," and argued that the court's decision set a disturbing legal precedent.

"To grant the House Committee's motion would guarantee that, every 10 years, the Legislature will adjourn without attempting to reach a compromise and that its members will troop before this court to seek enforcement of each body's favored plan for itself," the Republican Party argued.

The GOP says that the court-preferred map "has redrawn or relocated certain districts presently represented by Republicans so that they have a black voting age population majority," and that House leaders redrew the district of left-leaning stalwart Rep. Diane Peranich, D-Pass Christian, to exclude the home of Republican Jeff Wallace, "who had announced an intention to challenge her." (Wallace signed a Republican pledge to "fire McCoy and the boys" in March.)

The court made clear that its decision deals only with the interim maps intended to define elections this year, and did not officially endorse the House-preferred map as a permanent option.

The U.S. Department of Justice must scrutinize all redistricting maps submitted by the state of Mississippi for minority-voter dilution because of the state's history of voter suppression.

Previous Comments

ID

163381

Comment

Just a few weeks ago, this was a virtual victory for the Republicans; they had even boasted of getting what they wanted with the redistricting decision being left up to the court. But with the court's subtly surprising decision to go with the original House plan that creates more majority minority districts, which supposedly accurately reflects data gathered from the 2010 census, the Republicans find themselves backtracking with haste. Lesson learned: Be careful of what you wish for...

Author

jamesparker

Date

2011-05-06T06:16:53-06:00

ID

163429

Comment

The disturbing precedent is the GOP's refusal to be fair and obey the law. They always want to rig the election in their favor, suppressing the will of the people and then claim a 'mandate.' Granted, I think the most fair 'redistricting' would be to draw a number of straight lines across the state and be done with it - these weird squiggles that move every few years based on race population are a silly necessity for our current 'two party' monopoly. I propose a better election method, not redistricting (as federally ordered). What I would like to see takes "Instant Runoff" elections and adds a couple choice-enhancing items (I call it a cascading vote). First - a "No Confidence" box. If "No Confidence" gets the most votes - both candidates are dropped and everything must start over with a new slate of candidates. Second - a Ranking vote method. You rank your order of preference (including No Confidence). If your first choice is pushed out of the running by too few votes, your second choice gets your vote, down to the last two - then whomever gets the majority, wins. This way, if you really want to vote for the Independent or "third party" candidate - you can do so and not feel like you "wasted" your vote - as you get to put a 'if not x then y then z' ranking of your vote. It prevents expensive runoff elections and gives voters more of a voice in elections. It lets an elected candidate know if they were not the majority's first choice, so they better take some advice from the ones who were.

Author

BobbyKearan

Date

2011-05-10T09:23:42-06:00