CHC 1979-04-10 - Laserfiche WebLink

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If you have been denying certain groups of people access to the political system, that would be one test of discrimination. No matter what, next one, at-large plans cannot be used to minimize voting strength of any person , group, or whatever. You cannot use at-large plans for that purpose. The courts seem to favor, and there are exceptions, they seem to favor districts. Where the population; , can somehow--the districts can somehow be drawn to fairly equal proportions. So long as you are not doing it for the purpose of satisfying or favoring special interest groups. Or denying, in other words, groups of people their rights to political-- participating in the political process. Such other matters as the responsiveness of the representatives to the needs of the group; whether there is a state policy behind at-large districting; whether there has been past practice of inequality or discrimination ; the size of the district;, how many candidates an elector must vote for if positions are not contested for individually. That also is a consideration. To give you one or two examples that closely tie to Hawaii County. In Virginia Beach, Virginia back in 1967, the United States Supreme Court dealt with a case there involving eleven councilmen who were elected at-large. _ _ _ Seven of the eleven were required to reside in seven boroughs. which is equivalent to our district. You know, of course;- there was a challenge that these at-large voting schemes were discriminatory. The supreme court, in that particular case, upheld the, what they called the seven-four plan, because under the particular plan there was no attempt being made to discriminate against the negroes , the people who resided in the rural areas of the community of the eleven specific boroughs. The boroughs were used merely as a basis of residence for candidates. Not for voting or representation , necessarily. There were quite a few rural candidates. Virginia Beach, itself, was a tourist oriented borough. Just to give you an idea, the smallest district that had one candidate, one candidate running representing that particular borough, had only 733 residents in population. They had one councilman of the eleven. The largest borough had 29 , 000. They also had one councilman. You talk about equality of representation in terms of the one man, one vote rule. You divide in one situation 733 votes equal one councilman. The other one man, , 29, 000 , you can see, mathematically, a it cannot be one one vote. What the courts have looked at is the total picture. Not just mathematically does it come out to one man, one vote. The total picture is more important than any specific--like I say, the total forest is more important than whether one tree in the forest is termite eaten or not. In Mobile, Alabama in 1978, which is the most recent case ,that I could find, the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit held that at-large voting plan in Mobile, Alabama was illegal. They had three commissioners - 30 -