Wilson County Redistricting 2021

Scroll down to learn about redistricting basics and explore how the county has grown in population over the last ten years.

Redistricting is the process of analyzing and redrawing representative district boundaries every ten years, following the decennial United States Census. The U.S Census Bureau released the block level census data that will be used for redistricting on September 30th, 2021.

Upon release of the decennial United States Census data, representative district lines are analyzed and potentially redrawn to ensure that the population of each district are as nearly equal as practicable.

Congressional and legislative redistricting is performed by General Assembly.

Redistricting in Wilson County for the Wilson County Board of Commissioner Districts is performed by the Wilson County Board of Commissioners under the guidelines of North Carolina General Statue ( G.S. 153A-20  and  G.S. 153A-22 ).

Wilson County must redistrict in order to meet the constitutional requirement of one-person, one-vote. Under this principal, for everyone's vote to count the same, voting district populations need to be equal.

Over time, district populations change and become unbalanced.

North Carolina General Statue states that counties with districts where elected officials must reside in order to run for office, must look at population counts within each district to determine whether there are inequities. Districts should be drawn so that the quotients obtained by dividing the population of each district by the number districts are as nearly equal as practicable ( G.S. 153A-22 ).

The Wilson County Board of Commissioners must approve new district boundaries that follow constitutional and statutory principles:​

• Equal Population (less than 5% deviation from the "ideal population")​
• Contiguity of district
• Compactness​ of district
• Constituent Consistency​
• Preserve Communities of Interest

"Ideal Population" is derived by taking the population of a a total jurisdiction and dividing that by number of total districts. The resulting quotient is the "ideal population". 

The UNC School of Government's "Basics for Redistricting" can be found  here .

The 2010 Wilson Board of County Commissioner districts were drawn based upon a total population in Wilson County of 81,234. This total population when divided by the seven Commissioner Districts, yielded an "ideal population" of 11,605 people per district.

Following the 2020 decennial United States Census, the census data indicated a county population of 78,784. This population count indicated a -3% change the the population of Wilson County. Using this new population count, Board of County Commissioner District yield an "ideal population" of 11,255 people per district.

If those district boundaries were to remain the same the districts would be considered inequitable based upon the constitutional requirement of the one-person, one-vote principle, as seen in the table below.

As a result of the Wilson County population changes noted in the 2020 decennial census, redistricting is required to to ensure proper representational balance, so that every vote counts.

Current proposed changes to the Wilson County Commissioner provide a scenario in which the total population of each district return to balance.

Use the slider tool below to compare current Commissioner District boundaries with the proposed changes. Current boundaries are on the left side of the map; the potential changes can be found on the right side of the map. You can also zoom in and out and pan side-to-side within the map.

The population statistics for the proposed districts indicate equal disbursement of district population

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