As a result of the recent redistricting of ward and district lines throughout the Pine Belt, a small handful of voters in the City of Petal will see new aldermen and/or locations of their voting precincts.
The new precinct lines, which were approved at a recent meeting of the Petal Board of Aldermen, will take place immediately and will affect only municipal elections, the next of which will happen in 2025. Residents of the city’s six wards will now split their votes between the same three precincts as usual, with the exceptions of some residents who will be required to cast their votes at a new polling place.
“It actually affects where I live – I will be voting at (Petal) Civic Center, whereas in the past we have voted at Calvary (Baptist Church),” Mayor Tony Ducker said. “It’s a change that we will educate folks on when that time comes.”
For municipal elections, the following changes are applicable:
- Residents of Wards 1 and 3 will vote at the Petal Masonic Lodge at 120 Cameron Street;
- Residents of Wards 4 and 6 will vote at Petal Civic Center at 712A South Main Street; and
- Residents of Wards 2 and 5 will vote at Calvary Baptist Church at 1123 Mississippi 42.
Three members of the Petal Board of Aldermen – Ward 1 Alderman Gerald Steele, Ward 2 Alderman Steve Stringer and Ward 3 Alderman Blake Nobles – are seeking higher positions in the upcoming regional and county level elections, the primary of which will be held on August 8. If any of them were to be elected to those seats, a special municipal election would be necessitated, meaning the new precinct lines would go into effect for that election.
Earlier this year, board members voted to approve a new plan regarding the redistricting of the city’s six wards, which saw wards 2, 4, 5 and 6 slightly shifted to ensure that each ward has an approximate equal number of residents. That measure entails each ward possessing the same representation when it comes to voting in elections.
The redistricting process takes place every 10 years, after each United States Census, to uphold the “One Person, One Vote” principle.
Michael Slaughter, founder of Slaughter & Associates Urban Planning Consultants in Oxford, recently spoke with the board to explain the process.
“The United States Constitution, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other federal laws require equal distribution among the voting districts, or election districts, that we call wards,” Slaughter told the board in March. “What that comes down to, is we take the total population of the city, divide that by the number of wards, and that gives us what we refer to as an ideal population, and then we make the calculations based off that.”
Under the plan, a small area of Trussell Road and Corinth Road moved from Ward 5 to Ward 4, while the area of East 7th Avenue and Hillcrest Road moved from Ward 4 to Ward 6.
Meanwhile, one side of Redfern Trail, which is currently in Ward 2, moved to Ward 5, as did Backwoods Trail.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Petal’s population rose to 11,010, which is up 556 residents from the 10,454 counted in the 2010 U.S. Census.
In January 2022, it was determined the city would need to be redistricted so each ward can reach the ideal population of 1,838 to better comply with the one-person/one-vote principle according to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. At that time, Slaughter said the population variance of each ward should be at less than 10 percent, and preferably less than 5 percent, of the ideal population.
Before redistricting, the population and makeup of each of the wards were as follows:
- Ward 1: Total population is 1,857 with an ideal population of 1,838, for a variance of 19;
- Ward 2: Total population is 1,898 with an ideal population of 1,838, for a variance of 60;
- Ward 3: Total population is 1,888 with an ideal population of 1,838, for a variance of 50;
- Ward 4: Total population of 1,678 with an ideal population of 1,838, for a variance of -160;
- Ward 5: Total population of 2,024 with an ideal population of 1,838, for a variance of 186; and
- Ward 6: Total population of 1,681 with an ideal population of 1,838, for a variance of -157.
The new populations are as follows:
- Ward 1 with 1,857;
- Ward 2 with 1,814;
- Ward 3 with 1,888;
- Ward 4 with 1,801;
- Ward 5 with 1,851; and
- Ward 6 with 1,815.
“Some of this actually seems like we have a western movement, as far as bodies go, so this is kind of shaping that up,” said Ducker, who served as Ward 5 Alderman when he was elected mayor in 2021. “Oddly enough, when I first ran (for office), I was Ward 4 Alderman, so now I’m back in Ward 4.
“So I’ll get a new alderman, and folks will just have to know, when it comes time to vote, that (some of them) will be voting in a different place.
“There’s just a couple of spots that will actually pertain to. We’ll send out (information) through our regular formats – social media (and other media) when election time comes, so that’ll be a big talk in 2025.”
