Bamberg County remap approved

“What’ll happen now at this point in time is it’ll be sent to the state… and it’s official as of tonight,” County Administrator Joey Preston said.

The county has redrawn council districts to reflect changes in population, as noted in the last U.S. Census. The county’s population dropped from 15,987 in 2010 to 13,311 in 2020, a 16.7 percent decline.

The administrator explained that the county adhered to the constitutional requirement of one person, one vote, with all seven council districts having a population in compliance with the requirement.

The mean district size based on the new census data for the county is 1,902 people.

The individual district populations were:

• District 1 – 1,899

• District 2 – 1,871

• District 3 – 1,837

• District 4 – 1,950

• District 5 – 1,908

• District 6 – 1,862

• District 7 – 1,984

Preston has said the plan also adheres to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Under that act, the county has to work toward a plan with no retrogression, or reduction in the voting strength of a racial or ethnic group.

Districts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 remain majority-minority districts as before, he said. Districts 5 and 6 remain anchored in the Denmark area and Govan remains in District 6.

Preston has noted that because of population shifts, District 4, while remaining anchored in the Denmark area, grows toward Bamberg.

Districts 1 and 2 remain anchored in the Bamberg area, with District 2 seeing no change at all because of its only slight population shift.

Districts 3 and 7 remain mostly rural, with their shared boundary shifting only slightly to ensure the town of Olar will be in District 7. The town of Ehrhardt remains in District 7.

No one spoke during a public hearing held during the Dec. 6 meeting.

Attorney Joey Opperman explained that the county’s redistricting plan no longer has to go through the U.S. Justice Department for preclearance, which had once been a requirement under the federal Voting Rights Act.

The preclearance requirement mandated that states or localities with a history of racial voting discrimination get federal approval for election policy changes, including the maps that are redrawn every 10 years.

“Because of the Shelby County v. Holder case in 2013, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is not enforceable in the same way that it was previously … until Congress fixes that. So nothing goes to the Justice Department this year,” Opperman said.

“I don’t mean to say that the Voting Rights Act is not in effect. It most certainly is. It’s just the piece of the Voting Rights Act that used to require parts of the country and all of the state South Carolina to submit any plans to either the Justice Department or the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals … is not in effect,” he said.

He continued, “But what the law says you have to do to be compliant, that’s all in effect. So if a local government or a state failed to do that in their plan, then they could be sued in federal court, and that law still has plenty of teeth on that. … We’ve been very careful to ensure that the map that’s been presented to council and adopted is compliant with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”