Fixing The Vote To Favor One Race
In a NY suburb a judge has implemented a new way to make sure certain “minority” races get their “fair” share of the vote. There are 30,000 residents in Port Chester of which almost half comprise the minority of Hispanics. Somehow with 6 seats open and almost half of the presiding residence being hispanic all 6 seats have gone to white politicians.
Although the village of about 30,000 residents is nearly half Hispanic, no Latino had ever been elected to any of the six trustee seats, which until now were chosen in a conventional at-large election. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won.
Federal Judge Stephen Robinson said that violated the Voting Rights Act, and he approved a remedy suggested by village officials: a system called cumulative voting, in which residents get six votes each to apportion as they wish among the candidates. He rejected a government proposal to break the village into six districts, including one that took in heavily Hispanic areas.
The solution to this problem is that voters will now get 6 votes each so that Hispanics can now vote in hispanic leaders. Thing left out of this article was questioning whether or not the Hispanics as a whole in this community felt a need to vote in the first place. It did reference past voter turnout was around 25% which begs to be answered…if the hispanic community here was so concerned about representing themselves why did they not all go organize and out vote the white vote? If the “minority” segment of Hispanics in this town were to vote together (as is suggested in this article they needed so badly that a judge had to change how people in this NY suburb vote) could they have not out voted the minority of whites or others who even went to vote in the first place? Also is it the opinion of all the hispanic voters in this community that they feel they had hispanic nominees worthy of voting over another nominee of a different race? It is possible these voters were voting for who they wanted and did not base it on race? Sounds to me more like racial division perpetuated by the media and state to keep everyone divided.
A final interesting part at the end of the article I would like to highlight for you all here, surmise from it what you will.
Besides the forums, bright yellow T-shirts, tote bags and lawn signs declared “Your voice, your vote, your village,” part of the educational materials also mandated in the government agreement. Announcements were made on cable TV in each language.
All such materials — the ballot, the brochures, the TV spots, the reminders sent home in schoolkids’ backpacks — had to be approved in advance, in English and Spanish versions, by the Department of Justice.
