Redistricting vote delayed after NAACP complaints
By Randy Bell
Clinton officials will spend two more months getting public input on new ward lines before voting on a redistricting plan. The Board of Aldermen was poised to make the decision at its July 5 meeting, but representatives of the NAACP complained that the maps being considered don’t adequately represent the city’s African-American population. They asked the Board to delay the vote pending a review of a map the organization has drawn up and possibly other redistricting plans.
“Our plan reflects more of the city’s demographics,” says local NAACP board member Monica McInnis. Her message to City leaders: “Just be fair and transparent with us as we move forward.”
The manager of the Prepared to Vote and Voting Rights Defender Projects and Voting Special Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Amir Badat, urged the Board to create “meaningful opportunities to ensure that all residents’ voices are heard and meaningfully included at all stages of the redistricting process.”
In an interview later, he said, “Hopefully, we will have the opportunity now to be able to develop alternative plans. It’s not enough just to look at the maps. This is a really technical process. It requires certain types of software that you have to use to really dig in and analyze these maps and how they work and how they impact political power across the entire city.”
Badat and McInnis said they were pleased that the Board agreed to hold off on a redistricting decision.
“So, now we have two months,” Badat said. “And, hopefully, that will give us enough time to get the files that we need to have and to be able to do the analyses we need to be able to do and to develop plans that hopefully reflect the political power of citizens including Black citizens across the city in a fair and equitable way.”
Badat told the Board that Clinton’s Black voting age population is thirty-seven percent but noted that the City has only one Black majority district, Ward 6.
“Based on our preliminary analysis, it may be possible – and indeed, perhaps required under Section 2 (of the Voting Rights Act) – for the City of Clinton to draw a second majority Black ward.”
In the interview, Badat said, “What we’ve asked the Board to do is to just give us more time to evaluate these numbers, go through the process, be able to provide the results of our analysis to the Board for their consideration before adopting these maps. We’ll go to the drawing board now with the amount of time that we have and see what we can develop.” He’s calling on the City to schedule “multiple” public hearings to get input.
Mayor Phil Fisher takes exception to the notion that the City didn’t give the community enough opportunity to be involved in the redistricting process.
“I resent that they came in and said that we tried to pull a fast one,” said Fisher.
Fisher says the NAACP understood the process.
“Not only were they aware, they had been in my office and I had explained it to them,” he said.
The mayor says the organization’s representatives were invited to visit the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District offices to work on redistricting alternatives.
“And they didn’t show up,” Fisher says. “The opportunity was there to take part in the process. But to say that somehow we’re trying to set this thing up so they can’t be elected is absolutely unfair. It’s untrue. And I take great offense to it, personally.”
Ward 4 Alderman Chip Wilbanks says, regarding redistricting, “This is something [the Board] has looked at ad nauseum. But I’m not sure that we’ve put it out where we should have, maybe on some websites and things. I think it serves us all better to take some time and look at everything” – including the NAACP’s proposed ward map.
Ward 1 Alderwoman Karen Godfrey agrees with the mayor on some of his points about criticism he considers unfair.
“It looks like we’re the ones who just came up with this all of a sudden, when [in fact] the opportunity [for the NAACP to be involved] has been there and has not been taken.”
Robert Chapman says the Board’s proposed ward maps have been around for the entire eleven months he’s been the Ward 3 alderman.
“I understand the appeal to be quick and swift,” he says. But with the City elections still two years away, “I can understand that other side of the argument. You can argue that it’s due diligence. You can argue that it’s dragging our feet.”
Chapman says his definition of diversity is that “everybody’s voice counts the same. So, let’s all get at one table, and then we can come to a consensus.”
