Justice Concludes Black Voters Need Democratic Party

Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.

The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice”–identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

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Stephen LaRoque, a former Republican state lawmaker who led the drive to end partisan local elections, called the Justice Department’s decision “racial as well as partisan.”

“On top of that, you have an unelected bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., overturning a valid election,” he said. “That is un-American.”

The decision, made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, has irritated other locals as well. They bristle at federal interference in this city of nearly 23,000 people, two-thirds of whom are black.

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“To begin with, ‘nonpartisan elections’ is a misconceived and deceiving statement because even though no party affiliation shows up on a ballot form, candidates still adhere to certain ideologies and people understand that, and are going to identify with who they feel has their best interest at heart,” said William Cooke, president of the Kinston/Lenoir County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

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Others noted the absurdity of partisan elections since Kinston is essentially a one-party city anyway; no one among more than a half-dozen city officials and local residents was able to recall a Republican winning office here.

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar denied that the decision was intended to help the Democratic Party. He said the ruling was based on “what the facts are in a particular jurisdiction” and how it affects blacks’ ability to elect the candidates they favor.

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Critics on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are not so sure. “The Voting Rights Act is supposed to protect against situations when black voters are locked out because of racism,” said Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “There is no entitlement to elect a candidate they prefer on the assumption that all black voters prefer Democratic candidates.”

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In November’s election–one in which “hope” emerged as a central theme–the city had uncommonly high voter turnout, with more than 11,000 of the city’s 15,000 voters casting ballots. Kinston’s blacks voted in greater numbers than whites.

Whites typically cast the majority of votes in Kinston’s general elections. Kinston residents contributed to Barack Obama’s victory as America’s first black president and voted by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 to eliminate partisan elections in the city.

The measure appeared to have broad support among both white and black voters, as it won a majority in seven of the city’s nine black-majority voting precincts and both of its white-majority precincts.

But before nonpartisan elections could be implemented, the city had to get approval from the Justice Department.

Kinston is one of the areas subject to provisions of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, which requires the city to receive Justice Department approval before making any changes to voting procedures. Kinston is one of 12,000 voting districts in areas of 16 states, almost exclusively in the South, that the Voting Rights Act declared to have had a history of racial discrimination.

In a letter dated Aug. 17, the city received the Justice Department’s answer: Elections must remain partisan because the change’s “effect will be strictly racial.”

“Removing the partisan cue in municipal elections will, in all likelihood, eliminate the single factor that allows black candidates to be elected to office,” Loretta King, who at the time was the acting head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, wrote in a letter to the city.

Ms. King wrote that voters in Kinston vote more along racial than party lines and without the potential for voting a straight Democratic ticket, “the limited remaining support from white voters for a black Democratic candidate will diminish even more.”

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Ms. King’s letter in the Kinston case states that because of the low turnout black voters must be “viewed as a minority for analytical purposes,” and that “minority turnout is relevant” to determining whether the Justice Department should be allowed a change to election protocol.

Black voters account for 9,702 of the city’s 15,402 registered voters but typically don’t vote at the rates whites do.

As a result of the low turnout, Ms. King wrote, “black voters have had limited success in electing candidates of choice during recent municipal elections.”

“It is the partisan makeup of the general electorate that results in enough white cross-over to allow the black community to elect a candidate of choice,” she wrote.

Mrs. Thernstrom of the civil rights commission blasted the department’s interpretation of the law.

“The Voting Rights Act is not supposed to be compensating for failure of voters to show up on Election Day,” she said. “The Voting Rights Act doesn’t guarantee an opportunity to elect a ‘candidate of choice.’ . . . My ‘candidate of choice’ loses all the time in an election.”

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Kinston City Council member Joseph Tyson, a Democrat who favors partisan elections, said nothing is stopping black voters in Kinston from going to the polls.

“Unfortunately, I’m very disappointed with the apathy that we have in Kinston among the Afro-American voters,” he said.

Mr. Tyson, who is one of two black members of the six-member City Council, said the best way to help black voters in Kinston is to change the council’s structure from citywide voting to representation by district. Kinston voters currently cast as many votes in the at-large races as there are council seats up for election–typically three, or two and the mayor.

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Partisan local elections are a rarity in North Carolina. According to statistics kept by the University of North Carolina School of Government in Chapel Hill, only nine of the state’s 551 cities and towns hold partisan elections.

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