The DeKalb County Commission is set to appoint a redistricting committee in order to advise realigning some county commission district lines following the release of 2020 census data. Officials say that time is of the essence as data from the census bureau has been delayed and upcoming elections are looming.

Every ten years, following the release of United States census data, district lines are examined and/or realigned in order to equalize the number of the population within each district. During normal census years the data would be release in February, but this has not been a normal time.

With the global pandemic shutting down much of the country for most of 2020, census data is not expected to be released to the public until September 30, 2021. That, with petitions for the 2022 local primaries set to be issued in mid-December, gives the county only a short period to examine and redraw any district boundaries.

According to Matthew Hill, a senior GIS Specialist for the TN Comptroller’s office, once the census data is released, the redistricting committee must produce a recommendation to submit to the county commission. An approved plan is then presented to the election commission to redraw precinct and district lines so voters and potential candidates know in which they reside.

Hill said that it is believed that DeKalb’s population has grown over the past 10 years to more than 20,000 residents, with District 3 and District 7 having grown the most. “Right now we think the county commissioners will represent about 2,860 per district,” Hill said. “That is up from the 2,675 residents that you represent now. It also looks like the growth and declines in your county have actually been evenly distributed. With the estimates it looks like District 6 may have to gain some folks while Districts 3 and 7 may have to lose some population. All that means is that Districts 3 and 7 have grown at a faster pace than the other districts while District 6 has lagged a little bit behind the other districts in population.”

Hill said that the counties should receive census data mid-August and DeKalb should be ready as soon as possible. “We can start redistricting as soon as we begin processing all the data, but even then you have only a very slim timeline to redistrict in DeKalb County. For counties like yours, who have a primary in 2022, we recommend that you get your district lines set as quickly as possible, and get the plan over to the election commission in preparation for that primary. The worst thing that could happen is for people to come in to pick up a petition and the district lines are not set which would cause confusion.”

“Also think about the level of assistance you will need,” he continued. “You will have three options. You can have someone internally in your county do it, you can have somebody from CTAS do it, or I can help you with redistricting.”

“The Census Bureau provides us the total population with the makeup of all the demographics including white, black, Hispanic, and others and our GIS software will calculate as we select census blocks how many people we are moving from district to district and what it does to the overall deviation. Census blocks are really the building blocks of the plan. We are grouping census blocks to create districts and voting precincts”, he added.

DeKalb Election Administrator Dennis Stanley stressed the urgency for the plan. “This has nothing to do with politics,” Stanley said. “It’s about equal representation under the law. Whatever the impact of redistricting, it will take my office quite a while to make those changes in the voter data system. You can’t be approving a redistricting plan on December 1 and expect me to have that done by December 20 when we start giving out petitions for the Democratic Primary. Please understand that Matthew and his office will not tell you what plan you must adopt. They will provide you with some options and it will be up to this committee to make a recommendation to the full county commission. I am not asking you to accept what they present. I am asking that you look at it. You can make some alterations possibly, provided the numbers work, but don’t take three months to do it. You don’t have that much time,” said Stanley. “I am asking you to appoint a committee, have it in place, so when the numbers arrive, that committee is ready to go to work without delay.”