Tennessee will have to undertake redistricting in 2021 once official 2020 US Census numbers are known this fall. What that means is boundary lines for state house, state senate, and congressional districts will have to be redrawn as well as districts and voting precincts within the county.
District lines are redrawn every 10 years following completion of the United States census. The federal government stipulates that districts must have nearly equal populations and must not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity.
The U.S. Census Bureau announced in February that it would deliver the detailed datasets needed for redistricting to the states by September 30, 2021, after the original April 1, 2021, deadline.
Redistricting has to be completed before the 2022 election cycle so that candidates and voters will know in which districts they reside.
On the local level, the County Commission will select a redistricting committee to recommend a plan to be adopted by the commission. Ten years ago the County Commission appointed itself as the redistricting committee but leaned on the Office of Local Government, a division of the State Comptroller’s Office, which had all the data and mapping systems to make the process more efficient. As for voting precincts, those district lines are drawn by the county election commission.
With census numbers unavailable until fall and a local primary expected in May, 2022, the election commission will be under pressure to make changes as quickly as possible once district lines are redrawn.
On the state level redistricting is the process by which new congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn. Each of Tennessee’s nine United States Representatives and 132 state legislators are elected from political divisions called districts. United States Senators are not elected by districts, but by the states at large.
State Senator Mark Pody said that while the final census numbers are not yet known, preliminary results show growth in Tennessee and a dramatic shift in population from west and east Tennessee to middle Tennessee.
“The numbers are not all final yet and we probably won’t get those until fall possibly September but we know that all the districts in middle Tennessee on the congressional, state, and local levels will have to be reapportioned so each district has about the same number of people represented. Just on the preliminary numbers from our internal counts we know that there are now roughly 6,969,000 people in Tennessee. If you divide that up among the state’s 33 senators we can get an idea of how many people should be in each district. Middle Tennessee has grown with almost 200,000 more people than other parts of the state so that means that the Memphis and Knoxville areas will each be short about 100,000 people so that will have an impact on redistricting throughout the state,” said Senator Pody.
According to Senator Pody, it appears that he and State Representatives Terri Lynn Weaver and Clark Boyd as well as Congressman John Rose, who all represent DeKalb County, now have too many people in their districts.
“In my district, the 17th Senate District I am actually carrying (representing) about 30,000 more people than are supposed to be in this district so some of that population will be taken away from me by redrawing district lines,” said Pody. They will be redrawing John Rose’s congressional district lines as well because he has too many people in his district. All the state house districts will be changing as well. Representative Weaver as too many people in her district so those lines will be redrawn. Representative Boyd’s district will also change. Boyd currently represents Wilson, Cannon, and a portion of DeKalb County but Wilson County has changed so much that he will probably just be representing Wilson County alone. All the maps will be redrawn by the end of this year or early next year,” said Pody.
Following the 2010 United States Census, Tennessee was apportioned nine congressional seats.
Tennessee’s House of Representatives is made up of 99 districts; Tennessee’s State Senate is made up of 33 districts.
In Tennessee, congressional and state legislative district boundaries are drawn by the state legislature.
