It’ll be Warren County’s turn on Thursday to come up with a set of plans to redraw the five political districts to comply with federal voting rights laws.

Supervisors will sit down with the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District to look at areas along district boundaries that can equalize the population, dealing with shifts recorded in the 2010 Census.

This year’s local election calendar sets primaries for Aug. 2 and the general election for Nov. 8, though along current lines. Processing federal approvals in nine states governed by the Voting Rights Act and legal action by local branches of the NAACP to extend qualifying periods could prompt another election — along new lines — in 2012.

District 1 Supervisor David McDonald, whose district showed the most growth of the five county districts in 2010, said Tuesday that mandatory public hearings and displays of proposed new maps add to that lengthy timeline.

“We’re going to go forward with what state law says we’re supposed to do,” McDonald said during a speech at the Vicksburg Kiwanis meeting. “State law says March 1 was the deadline, you have the primary Aug. 2…that’s what our plans are right now.”

Warren County’s total population is 48,773, down 1.75 percent from the 2000 census count. Inside Vicksburg, the population slipped 9.7 percent in 10 years, to 23,856.

Renderings show District 1, which covers the northeast part of the county, with 11,671 people. District 3 had the fewest, with 8,293 people located in central Vicksburg and entirely within the city limits. Population must be balanced within a 10 percent gap between the most populous districts, using a statistical ideal as a numerical pivot point. CMPDD has determined that point to be roughly 9,755.

Each supervisor is expected to have some idea of how best to balance the most populous and least populous districts within a 10 percent range mandated by the U.S. Department of Justice. McDonald hesitated to point to a best-case scenario involving his district until substantive talks begin.

“I’ve got some predominately black areas that I could move over that are fairly close to the second and third districts,” McDonald said, adding possibilities exist to balance the numbers using District 4 and District 5, where population moved little either direction in the past decade. “But, there’s not sufficient numbers in those census blocks to bring it up to the 10 percent deviation that they want.”

Supervisors are elected from each of the five districts, as are members of the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees. Three districts denote constable and justice court seats, where precincts around the borders of each are expected to shift as a result of this year’s census.