Sunday, February 27, 2011

New redistricting website up

Mississippi Legislative Redistricting 2011, which is subtitled "A closer, comprehensive look at the Mississippi House of Representative plan to redraw all 122 state House districts", is online. It's a great site, and highly informative.

Today, the site hosts a piece from Speaker Billy McCoy (D-Rienzi). In the post, Speaker McCoy confirms that 3 House members will lose their districts, that the City of Madison will gain its own, that DeSoto County will pick up 2 seats, and that the number of split precincts will be greatly reduced. That's pretty substantial stuff.

Speaker McCoy also repeated something we've known for awhile: the rancor over redistricting is largely coming from Republicans who aren't in the Legislature. (See "Mississippians for Fair Redistricting.") The Speaker then warns against the high cost to the taxpayers of litigation over the legislative redistricting plan. High litigation costs for taxpayers aren't historically much of a concern for Republicans, however, so we'll see how this plays out.

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