Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson has informed legislative leaders that his office is taking steps to prepare for redistricting in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision opening the door for states to eliminate majority-Black electoral districts.
Watson, a Republican who is running for lieutenant governor, referenced the June 9 letter in a news release on Tuesday.
“Recently, in light of the ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais et al., its direct impact on the existing legislative district maps, and my statutory duty as Mississippi’s Chief Elections Officer, I notified Speaker Jason White and Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann of our team’s intent at the Secretary of State’s Office to begin preparing the Statewide Elections Management System (SEMS) for a reversion to the original 2022 legislative redistricting map adopted by the Mississippi Legislature,” Watson said.
The ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case places Mississippi and other Southern states at the center of a national partisan and racial political battle over redistricting. Some Republicans already running or expected to run for statewide office in 2027 have taken steps to wade into the redistricting debate.
Watson said he had to send a letter to inform lawmakers what timeline they face if they intend to redraw districts before the 2027 legislative elections. This is because no redistricting changes may be made to the statewide election system while an election is in progress, Watson said.
The Statewide Elections Management System is the statewide system that county election officials use to administer elections at the local level. Legislative districts can include portions of groups of counties, and this system determines the legislative district for each voter..
The timeline Watson pointed out said that for the 2027 statewide legislative elections, changes to the election management system would be prohibited from early June 2027 through mid-Dec. 2027.
Watson also said that for the 2026 midterm federal elections coming up in November, changes to the system will be prohibited from 60 days before election day. Mississippi has already conducted primaries for the fast-approaching midterms, and lawmakers would have to take the improbable step of invalidating those results and conducting new elections, a plan most legislative leaders haven’t expressed an appetite for carrying out.
White and Hosemann, who lead the majority-white, Republican-dominated Legislature, have already formed special committees in both chambers to consider redistricting. They could redraw several different electoral maps, including the congressional maps, state legislative maps and state supreme court maps.
In addition to Watson, other potential Republican candidates for statewide office in 2027 have opined on redistricting, showing the issue could be salient among GOP primary voters. Since the Callais ruling came down, state Auditor Shad White, considered a likely Republican candidate for governor in 2027, has been beating the drum for the Legislature to return and redraw congressional maps in a way that could oust U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s lone Democrat and lone Black member of Congress, from his seat in this year’s midterms.
On the legislative maps level White and Hosemann have not declared outright that they intend to revert to the maps they initially drew in 2022 to account for population shifts across the state. A redrawing of those maps could erase some small gains Democrats made in the Legislature in recent years.
White and Hosemann did not immediately respond on Tuesday to requests for comment about Watson’s letter.
Lawmakers, using data from the 2020 U.S. Census, passed a new legislative map in 2022, as states normally do when they redraw state legislative and congressional districts. But a group of Black voters successfully sued the state, arguing that the state didn’t draw enough majority-Black legislative districts during this process.
A federal three-judge panel agreed and ordered the state to create additional majority-Black legislative districts, which the Legislature did in 2025. But the U.S. Supreme Court later reversed that lower-court ruling.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s order reversing that lower-court decision didn’t negate the 2025 laws the Legislature passed to redraw the districts, so it’s unclear if Watson’s decision to prepare for a reversion to the old districts conflicts with the 2025 maps.
Gov. Tate Reeves and White, though, have said they believe lawmakers will redraw legislative districts in a special session this year, before lawmakers convene in January for the 2027 regular session.
In a statement, state Rep. Cheikh Taylor, the Mississippi Democratic Party chairman, said Watson’s move shows Republicans are trying to revert to a political era before Black residents had fair representation.
“Let’s be clear about what Michael Watson is doing,” said Chairman Taylor. “He is laying the administrative groundwork to hand Republicans a political windfall before a single public hearing has been held, before a single map has been drawn, and before Mississippi voters have had any say.”
Republican state officials have said redistricting based on race is wrong, but support redistricting based on partisan interests.
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