Voting Rights Fight in the Middle of LA Area
The City of Compton, snack-dab in the middle of the sprawling Los Angeles metro area, is considering changing it’s voting habits – they might be changing from at large representation to single-member districts. Give it a moment, find your bearings in the time-warp. This is 2011, and they’re just now getting to it.
I shouldn’t gloat, and I’m not, there are towns in my South Texas back yard that are just as politically backward. It’s just that voting rights advocates’ work seems never to be done. The gist of the Compton story is that three Latina residents wanted to postpone Compton’s April primary and June general election because they claimed the at-large scheme violated their voting rights. They sued in court.
The LA Times reports:
The plaintiffs contend that the city’s at-large elections to choose a representative for each of Compton’s four districts weaken Latinos’ voting power, and they are pushing for district-restricted voting.
Such a change could give a Latino candidate a greater chance of winning a council seat, the plaintiffs argue. Over the last two decades Compton’s population has shifted from predominantly African American to about two-thirds Latino, though blacks still constitute the majority of registered voters. No Latino candidate has ever been elected to the City Council or any other city office.
The plaintiffs are represented by Joaquin Avila, who has decades of legendary voting rights defense experience. He told the LA Times “We thought we had a compelling case. What we have here is a complete absence historically of Latino representation.”
Avila and his team presented evidence that told a compelling story of political segregation: “Their data found that Latino voters typically support Latino candidates, while blacks seldom support them. Latinos, however, could win election in districts with denser populations of registered Latino voters.”
But they’re all going to have to wait.
In a tentative ruling hashed out with attorneys Tuesday, Judge Ann I. Jones said the plaintiffs, three Latina residents, had not presented enough evidence to warrant postponing Compton’s April primary and June general election. Jones said she would take the matter under submission, before issuing a definitive judgment within the week.
