By the 2019 election cycle, Panola County residents will know how they fared in the 2012 redistricting that becomes effective in the upcoming 2015 election cycle.

At a glance, we’ve been skewed.

Although the county is no longer divided into three representative districts, we are now divided into three senate districts with Panola voters in each comprising a small a minority of the total.
Senate District 9 places seven Panola precincts with the whole of Lafayette County.

Senate District 11 places 12 Panola precincts with the whole of Tunica and Quitman Counties as well as with six Coahoma precincts that include Clarksdale.

See what I mean?

And voters in the Pope, Eureka and South Springport precincts of Panola County find themselves cut adrift and attached to Senate District 14 that appears to have been thrown together from everything leftover in eight or so counties between here and Jackson.

That’s the hand that has been dealt us.

This at a time when declining priority in state government for northwest Mississippi projects has been brought sharply into focus by the condition that our roads and bridges have been allowed to deteriorate.

The hope is that commonality is not defined by county lines — that people in Panola County share goals and purposes with people in neighboring counties with whom they are now linked by the fickle redrawing of a political boundary.

The best case scenario would be that we will have three times the influence in the Senate because we will soon have three senators working in our interests instead of one.

That’s our best bet. To cultivate the senators for our three districts and to create alliances with voters from those districts who live in neighboring counties. We’ve got five years, then another census that will be followed by another round of redistricting.