Madison County (MS) Moves 2,000 Black, Hispanic Voters To Crowded Precinct

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Carol Mann, a Democratic candidate for District 1 election commissioner, told the Mississippi Free Press that the voters are being moved from a location “with adequate polling stations and adequate parking to an extremely cramped polling place” and that the change will cause “chaos and confusion.”

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Non-white residents account for about 80%, or roughly 2,000, of the voters who have been moved from the Recreation Center to the apartments.

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As recently as the March 2020 party primaries, the affected voters cast their ballots at the Ridgeland Recreation Center on Old Trace Park near the Ross Barnett Reservoir (named for the segregationist 1960s governor). Most voters in that precinct are white, but until the recent boundary change, it included a significant and growing non-white population that has helped make recent elections more competitive for Democrats—at least on the precinct level.

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The change, which took effect quietly in July, means that around 2,470 mostly white voters will continue voting at the the Recreation Center, but 2,550 other voters, most of them Black or Hispanic residents who would have still voted there as early as this past spring, must now cast their ballots at The Mark Apartments precinct.

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Even before the boundary shift, The Mark Apartments precinct was the only majority non-white polling place in the district and served 1,125 voters. With the boundary shift, though, it will now serve at least 3,670 voters. As a whole, the six precincts in District 1 serve just 1,932 voters on average.

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The Recreation Center is larger with hundreds of parking spots, and officials expect it to have between eight and 10 voting machines on Election Day. The Mark, which will now serve about 1,100 more voters than the Recreation Center, only has 25 parking spaces available. As of this past weekend, election officials only expected to allocate about five voting machines to The Mark.

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“I’m concerned there won’t be enough space to accommodate voters. I’m concerned about the motive behind it, the reasoning behind it,” Cunningham told the Mississippi Free Press on Wednesday.

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