Kinston voting rights case could have a big impact on Beaufort | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Federal District (DC) Court Judge John Bates has dismissed the case of Laroque v. Holder, a case originating in Kinston, North Carolina. It may become a landmark Supreme Court decision and if so could have a major impact on Beaufort County's "limited voting" system and the Beaufort County School Board electoral system. Here's the background:

    Laroque originated in Kinston where the people by popular vote voted by a 2:1 margin to replace their partisan city council electoral system with a non-partisan system. Because Lenoir County is a "covered jurisdiction" under the Voting Rights Act the change had to be approved by the U. S. Justice Department before it could be implemented. DOJ's Voting Rights Section denied pre-clearance. The denial was appealed to the District Court and now that court has dismissed. It is being appealed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

    Put the Kinston case on hold and allow us to give some background.

    The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. § 1973) as amended and extended has two major provisions. Section 2 outlaws overt discrimination in electoral systems. That section applies nationwide. But it requires that the plaintiff prove that a specific voting system provision discriminated against minorities. Section 5 applies only to certain jurisdictions. Generally, a covered jurisdiction is covered by Section 5 if prior to the act a jurisdiction had used a device to limit voting, such as the literacy test, and the percent of registered voters was less than 50% of the eligible voters. In North Carolina, originally 41 counties were "covered jurisdictions," Beaufort and Lenoir counties being two of them. Again, any change in a voting system in a covered jurisdiction has to be "pre-cleared" by the Justice Department and DOJ will not pre-clear any change which it determines will have the likely effect or is intended to make it more difficult for minorities to elect candidates of their choice than the existing system does. Such a change would be called "retrogressive."

    Historically, the Justice Department has determined intent and effect to discriminate using complex statistical analysis. One of those statistical tests was to determine the extent to which voters vote along racial lines. It is such a finding that historically threw out "at-large" nomination, residential or voting systems, such as Beaufort County had used for many years to elect county commissioners prior to a law suit being brought by a group of blacks led by Rev. David Moore.

    Once it was determined by the judge that whites vote along racial lines, that conclusion produced a presumption that presumed the at-large system (with run-offs) had to be replaced by some other system. That's when "limited voting" was proposed by the County (there is some argument about that, but that is what the court order said--that the judge approved what the county commissioners reocmmended). Limited voted allows each voter to vote for one candidate each election no matter how many seats are to be filled.

    About the same time, the city and county schools merged and a district electoral system was devised and DOJ pre-cleared that system. In the school board system each voter gets one vote and gets to vote only for one of nine seats on the board. The terms are staggered so that means half the seats (half the voters theoretically) get to vote on the school board each election.

    We'll come back to Beaufort in a minute but now shift your attention back to Lenoir County.

    The Kinston city council used a partisan system to elect its members. This meant that Democrats ran in a primary and Republicans also had a primary. Then the Republican nominees ran against the Democrat nominees in the general election. Democrats usually won. The reason? Because the registered voters in Kinston are predominately black and Democrat. Statistically, depending on the number of candidates who run, there is a high probability that all electees will be Democrats and thus black since blacks tend to vote (over 90% historically) for blacks. Few whites could get elected. But interestingly, the voters voted 2-1 to change to non-partisan elections. The court record shows that 64.6% of the registered voters are black. Basically, they wanted to use a system much like the Washington City Council uses.

    Remember, the Voting Rights Act clearly says it is intended to protect "minority" voters. But minority voters in Kinston are white. Prior to 1965 only whites were typically elected. Thus, one might argue (as does Laroque) that the Voting Rights Act has eliminated the previous racially discriminatory voting system against blacks and it is now whites who are the minority and thus discriminated against by the partisan system.

    Now this point is important. The U. S. Supreme Court in a Texas case last year (Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. One v. Holder) questioned the "affirmative remediation" effect of Section 5 by suggesting, as dicta, that the vestiges of prior racial discrimination had been overcome and thus was no longer constitutional in those jurisdictions that had been found to now be free of a racially discriminatory voting system.

    The facts in Kinston tend to support that conclusion.

    So essentially the Kinston case presents the question to the Supreme Court, if it gets heard there, that says: "how long after an affirmative action system (which discriminates in favor of a group that has suffered previous discrimination) has eliminated the effects of that discrimination is it legal to continue such remedial discrimination?"

    The fundamental legal theory is that all people should be treated equally. But the courts have ruled in hundreds of cases, most notably school desegregation, employment, public accommodations and voting that discriminators can be required to "favor" those previously discriminated against, but only to the extent that it is necessary and reasonable to eliminate the vestiges of prior discrimination. Then, the theory goes, we should revert back to an "equal treatment of everyone" standard.

    So the Kinston case says: "blacks are no long suffering from historical voter discrimination" and thus Section 5, as applied to such a situation, is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U. S. Constitution.

    If the court simply hands down a standard of how the lower courts are to determine exempting a jurisdiction from Section 5 that will be instructive to Beaufort County in terms of the question of: "Has the limited voting system eliminated prior discrimination against blacks in Beaufort County?" If so, it could be changed without pre-clearance. If not, it would probably have to remain. Or at least it would continue to set the standard by which retrogression is determined.

    If, on the other hand, the Supreme Court uses Laroque to rule Section 5 unconstitutional, (probably) because enough time has passed and it decides it is now time to return to the "equal treatment" standard then Section 5 becomes null and Beaufort's limited voting could be changed by action of the Legislature upon request of the Beaufort County Commissioners.

    What happens in all this will be interesting in relation to the School Board electoral system.

    The School Board is elected by nine single-member districts. Those districts must be approximately equal in population according to the "One person-One vote" standard. They are not. They have not been redrawn to reflect population shifts for twenty years.

    So when the 2010 census numbers are in the districts will most likely have to be redrawn to conform to the One person-One vote rule. Then the question becomes: Will the districts also have to be gerrymandered (as they are now) to allow the election of three blacks?

    No one knows at this point how the districts might be configured. But it is entirely possible that nine districts cannot be drawn to create three minority districts. So that will raise several questions, not the least of which will be whether to adopt the limited voting system for the school board.

    What the possibilities are will be in large measure determined by Laroque if it goes to the Supreme Court. And what position the Republican House of Representatives takes on Section 5 before the Supreme Court rules on the issue.

    It's going to be interesting.

    Delma Blinson writes the "Teacher's Desk" column for our friend in the local publishing business: The Beaufort Observer. His concentration is in the area of his expertise - the education of our youth. He is a former teacher, principal, superintendent and university professor.
Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




Abortion: Where Conscience Meets the Womb Bloodless Warfare: Politics, Op-Ed & Politics The WDN is out to lunch on Limited Voting

HbAD0

 
Back to Top