Cities Are Reviving A Jim Crow-Era Tricks To Suppress Latino Votes

It is disheartening when one sees that the same inhumanity towards others who are different that was a hallmark of the both the Old South and the Jim Crow South remains alive and well, sometimes even in progressive states.  The goal, as has always been the case, is to keep power vested in whites and those who see themselves as "real Americans" even though the nation's Native Americans, the only real Americans were largely eradicated through a policy of genocide by those now claiming the real American mantle and their forebears.  A piece in Think Progress looks at how at large voting districts and gerrymandered districts and other ploys - things that Virginians excel at - are now being used to suppress the Hispanic vote (all of the cities in Hampton Roads utilize at large voting systems).  Here are highlights:

Yakima, WA is one-third Latino, but a Latino candidate has not been elected to the city council for almost 40 years. Santa Barbara, CA is 38 percent Latino, but only one Latino has been elected to its council in the last 10 years. And Pasadena, TX is 43 percent Hispanic, but the ethnic group is not even close to being proportionately represented in the city government. 

All three cities have been or are currently being sued for allegedly using discriminatory at-large voting systems, a voter dilution tactic that has been recently and frequently employed against Hispanic voters. In an at-large system, every city resident votes for each member of the governing body and the city does not divide voters into districts. 

As the Latino population grows across the country, cities have employed at-large voting to dilute the Latino vote and maintain white control of local governing bodies. Instead of allowing each district to elect its own representative, an at-large system means that unless Hispanic populations reach a majority in the entire city, they will have no influence in electing their local members of government. According to Fair Vote, at-large systems allow 50 percent of voters to control 100 percent of seats, typically resulting in racially homogeneous elected bodies. The tactic used to be popular in the South to discriminate against neighborhoods with large African American communities but is now targeting a new threat: Latinos.

Because California has a state voting rights law, it “facilitates this type of challenge,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. As a result, he said we will see a lot of settlements and moves away from at-large systems in California.

Across the rest of the country, where voting rights laws may not be as strong, the only way to challenge at-large systems is by using Section 2 of the VRA [Voting Rights Act], a process that is “extremely time-consuming and expensive,” Saenz told ThinkProgress. As a result, a number of jurisdictions will attempt to get away with at-large systems without being challenged. 

Cities have historically used at-large districts to dilute the African American vote, McDonald said, and many still do. 

Beginning in 1986, a number of cases challenged at-large voting systems in Alabama over the course of a decade. A district court ultimately ruled that 200 jurisdictions were using the discriminatory voting system and required them to adopt new districting.

The problem seemed to have been solved in the South until the Supreme Court gutted the VRA in 2013, opening the door for Southern states to move forward with at-large voting districts. With growing immigrant and Hispanic populations, cities in Texas and other Southern states reverted to using discriminatory systems.

Cities that have gotten away with using at-large systems in the past may also be forced to change their systems as the Hispanic population grows and reaches a critical mass,  . . .