[EL] mooting Kinston case?/noncitizen voting/charlie white

Fri Feb 3 11:02:18 PST 2012

Rob,

It is my understanding that the change to non-partisan elections was done by a vote of the people of Kinston...which is a majority African American and that a majority of that subset of the population voted for the change. 

It would be one thing to trigger a Sec 5 challenge if a White majority had passed this law to disenfranchise African American voters. But, here we have a federal government coming in and telling African American voters that they know better how to defend their interests than they do themselves. 

Strange at best. Condescending at worst. But, I appreciate your mathematical analysis. Very helpful.

Matt

Central Washington University
Assoc. Professor of Political Science 
manwellerm at cwu.edu
509-963-2396 >>> Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> 2/3/2012 10:16 AM >>>

Matt,

You aren't correct in explaining the nature of the 2009 objection in Kinston. It's not about African American voters needing the partisan brand to know how to vote. It's about more white voters supporting African American candidates because of the partisan brand - -- with one very concrete fact being that NC has "straight ticket voting," which no longer would apply when going to nonpartisan contests. The change will easily mean fewer white voters casting votes for African American candidates running with strong African American support.

Furthermore, going to a plurality vote would force African Americans to nominate only a single candidate to maximize their chances, which can be hard to do when you are becoming the majority of the electorate.

For what it's worth, I think changing from traditional partisan primaries to nonpartisan elections in places with Kinston-type numbers will have a real tendency for "first choice candidate" of racial minorities to lose to a "second choice candidates." My view came out of rigorous analysis of the Top Two primary system as adopted in California and as used (and just reinstated for congressional races) in Louisiana. 

The math of the problem is rather straightforward. Let's take a runoff/Top Two system in a jurisdiction that is 60% to 70% African American (or one could swap another racial minority). It won't be unusual for two African Americans to advance to a final runoff, with one of those candidates being a strong candidate of choice of African American voters and the other a weak choice. In the runoff, let's say the candidate who is a strong choice of African Americans gets two-thirds of the black vote, but very few white votes. That can allow white voters to ally with some African American voters to elect the "weak choice" candidate.

We've seen this often in mayoral elections in New Orleans, as one example. This fall, i suspect it will play out in several California races. Top Two will have little o no effect on most races, as the majority of races will end up with one Republican facing one Democrat. But in heavily racial minority districts, there may well be two racial minority Democrats -- and then this dynamic kicks in.

Still, I can imagine this isn't the kind of case the DOJ wants to debate before the Supreme Court as much as other Section 5 cases.

Rob

On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 12:43 PM, Mathew Manweller <ManwellerM at cwu.edu> wrote:

Or, it could be that the case in Kinston is so intellectually indefeasible, so offensive in the suggestion that minorities need partisan cues on how to vote and other races do not, and such a mind boggling overreach of federal power, that even Eric Holder understood that this dog would not hunt.
Matt Manweller

Central Washington University
Assoc. Professor of Political Science 
manwellerm at cwu.edu
509-963-2396 >>> Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> 2/3/2012 9:24 AM >>>

Breaking: DOJ Poised to Moot Kinston Case Challenging Constitutionality of Voting Rights Act 
Posted on February 3, 2012 9:20 am by Rick Hasen 
Check out this document. I would guess that the thinking is that DOJ would rather go up to the Supreme Court on the Shelby County case record than the record in the Kinston case. I think that’s probably a wise calculation. Kinston involves a DOJ denial of preclearance of a move from partisan to nonpartisan elections, with DOJ’s objection in part that minority voters would have a harder time identifying Democratic candidates.

Posted in Voting Rights Act | Comments Off 
Credible NBC Report of Non-Citizen Voting in Florida 
Posted on February 3, 2012 9:07 am by Rick Hasen 
Very interesting report which requires further investigation.

Posted in chicanery, voter registration, voting | Comments Off 
Jury May Reach Verdict Today in Charlie White Voter Fraud Case 
Posted on February 3, 2012 8:45 am by Rick Hasen 
See here. From White’s perspective, a good day for it to happen.

Posted in SOS White | Comments Off 
-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org

_______________________________________________
Law-election mailing list
Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice" 

Rob Richie
Executive Director

FairVote 
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 610
Takoma Park, MD 20912
www.fairvote.org rr at fairvote.org
(301) 270-4616

Please support FairVote through action and tax-deductible donations -- see http://fairvote.org/donate. For federal employees, please consider a gift to us through the Combined Federal Campaign (FairVote's CFC number is 10132.) Thank you!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120203/b2bd0114/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/png
Size: 1520 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20120203/b2bd0114/attachment.png>