By Harold Brummett
Star Denmark Route

Redistricting has been accomplished and put into practice. The arguments are many about fairness and sausage making and understanding the process. Having attended a couple of the hearings on the subject the only conclusion is that the politicians heard what their constituents had to say and then did what they wanted to anyway.

The real fallout from redistricting has just begun to have its impact as the legislature started [its] session. There is the obvious of having certain conservative legislators redistricted out of a job and Bennie Thompson given more territory. 

The lawyer elite having no real party allegiance except power and control in the Senate put at the head of 41 senate committees 10 chairmanships to Democrats. So much for a Republican supermajority. 

Closer to home I wondered about the impact of redistricting. These numbers are from the last election. These numbers came from the Lafayette County Recapitulation Report and Ballotpedia. Here is the breakdown in the graph included with this column.

As the graph shows only Nicole Boyd and Clay Deweese get the majority of votes from Lafayette county. The rest of our representatives get the majority of their votes from other counties. 

It seems to the casual observer that one of the fastest-growing counties in the state has been hobbled by dissolution of voters. Could a representative who only has, say 3.8 percent of their voters come from Lafayette County, really care about what was best for those few constituents or Lafayette County as a whole?

With redistricting under control, the legislators now struggle with how to keep the voice of the people tamped down through relegating the ballot initiative to a confusing “me too” schemes, allowing lawmakers to make a counter-proposal to whatever the people want or simply have the final say before an initiative becomes law. 

Income tax reworking is another issue taking up legislator’s time and like an old sergeant once told me, don’t confuse activity with action. 

These important problems require diligent and dedicated legislators [who] understand their counties.  Redistricting has watered down the soup of Lafayette County legislative power and while filling, has little real nutritional value.