The Sunflower County Board of Supervisors on Monday gave Circuit Clerk Carolyn Hamilton permission to overhaul the county’s voter records in the Statewide Election Management System so residents can be reassigned into newly drawn chancery and circuit court districts before this year’s judicial elections.
Hamilton told the board she must change “judicial lines” in SEMS to reflect statewide redistricting for chancery and circuit judges and cannot legally do that extra work without formal board approval and a written compensation agreement.
At the meeting held at the Sunflower County Courthouse, the board convened with all supervisors present: District 1 Supervisor Glenn Donald, District 2 Supervisor Riley Rice, District 3 Supervisor Roger Anthony, District 4 Supervisor Anthony Clark and Board President Gloria Dickerson of District 5.
During her report, Hamilton said she was notified on Dec. 19 that Sunflower County would have to complete redistricting work for the chancery and circuit judge districts, but that she did not actually receive the formal notice until after she returned home from the holidays. She then contacted state officials to ask for a firm deadline and was told all SEMS changes and judicial line updates must be finished by Feb. 2, a timetable she described as “not giving us a whole lot of time” to get the work done.
Hamilton said she normally would have delivered the information to the board earlier but “everything didn’t work out according to plans,” leaving the board to act on a compressed schedule. She explained that the re‑mapping work — logging into SEMS, changing the judicial districts attached to Sunflower County voters and ensuring that ballot styles match the new chancery and circuit groupings — falls outside her ordinary statutory duties as circuit clerk. Because of that, she included a separate agreement for the board to approve so she can be “compensated legally for the work” she will perform outside regular hours.
“Madam President, I want to put that request in the form of a motion,” Donald said, asking the board to appoint Hamilton, as clerk, to “fulfill” the task of making the designated changes in SEMS for the chancery and circuit districts. Donald made the motion, and Anthony provided the second. The board voted to approve Hamilton’s request to make the changes and to approve the accompanying compensation agreement. After a brief clarification from Donald to ensure the compensation language was fully included in a single motion, Board President Dickerson confirmed, “That’s one motion,” and the board agreed staff would get the signed agreement back to Hamilton. Donald thanked her for her work, telling her, “You always do a great job.”
Supervisors then briefly discussed the broader impact of the statewide judicial redistricting on Sunflower County. They noted that the county has long been part of the same chancery district with Warren, Washington, Humphreys and other familiar partners, but will soon be placed in a new Delta‑centered district in which Bolivar County is expected to serve as the main seat. Members of the board and staff said the change could mean Sunflower no longer routinely hosts a resident chancery judge unless a local candidate wins a seat and chooses to base operations in Indianola, and that Sunflower County candidates will now have to compete against sitting judges from Bolivar and Leflore counties in the reconfigured chancery district.
Officials also raised concerns about youth court operations under the new structure. They said that if the Legislature later creates a separate county court for Sunflower County, that court could handle youth matters; otherwise, the state would likely appoint a youth court referee to cover Sunflower County’s juvenile docket if no local candidate is elected chancellor. In that scenario, they discussed again using space in the annex building behind Justice Court, where youth court functions have been housed in the past.
With no further questions, Dickerson thanked Hamilton again for her work and moved the meeting on to the next item, leaving the clerk facing a tight Feb. 2 deadline to finish the SEMS changes that will determine which judges Sunflower County voters see on their ballots later this year.
