2012

Today Plaintiffs in the North Carolina statewide redistricting case filed a motion for summary judgment, asking the court to hold that North Carolina's House, Senate and Congressional redistricting plans are unconstitutional. As part of the research for that motion, plaintiffs' found that 2056 voters in the state had been assigned to the wrong district in a sampling of 6 of North Carolina's 100 Counties. 715 of those voters actually voted in the primary and 222 of them received the wrong ballot. Plaintiffs are asking for a hearing in mid-November. Any change in the maps won't take effect until the 2014 elections, but the wrongly assigned voters could be corrected in time for the November 2012 general election. Attached below are the Motion and a one-page summary of the filings.

When Patty Almond ran for Mayor of the town of Mt. Gilead in November, 2011, she lost by just two votes. However, in that election at least four African-American voters were improperly denied the right to vote when poll officials erroneously told them they did not live within the town boundaries. Even though they had voted in numerous previous city elections, this time they were turned away without a ballot and told to go to city hall to sort things out. Humiliated and discouraged, they returned home without being able to cast their votes. SCSJ’s staff attorney Clare Barnett represented Patty Almond in an election protest. After an appeal to Superior Court, the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted unanimously on September 4th to order a new election for the office of Mayor of Mt. Gilead. The voters improperly denied the right to vote in 2011 will be allowed to cast their votes in the new election. Mt. Gilead, in Montgomery County, has a total population of 1,181, of whom 56% are Black.

National NAACP Releases Statement Praising DC Court’s Invalidation of TX Redistricting Plans Under Section 5 of the VRA. You may read The NAACP Redistricting Statement in the attachment below or under Press Releases.

SCSJ and the Texas State NAACP have scored a huge win: a panel of judges in D.C. rejected all three of Texas’ statewide redistricting maps as violating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The DC Court found that the Texas Congressional redistricting plan would have a discriminatory and retrogressive effect on minority voters. It also found that that the plan was motivated by discriminatory intent, based largely on evidence presented by SCSJ and the NAACP on how the state intentionally carved up the districts of the three black members of Congress from Texas so as to undermine the effectiveness of those districts. That finding of intentional discrimination may aid advocacy groups in defending Section 5 as a necessary voting rights tool. Additionally, despite the fact that the Department of Justice refused to defend Congressional District 25, the NAACP and other intervenors were able to persuade the court that the district was one in which minority voters must be protected. The NAACP and SCSJ, with other groups, likewise convinced the DC court that the Senate redistricting plan must be rejected as intentionally discriminatory. In the State House plan, the NAACP and SCSJ were able to protect the only district in which an Asian-American candidate is elected to the Texas State House of Representatives. Finally, the decision presents strong language on the protection of coalition and crossover districts under Section 5, and will be a useful tool in defending those types of minority opportunity districts going forward. For national comment on the significance of the opinion see: http://www.thenation.com/blog/169602/federal-court-blocks-discriminatory-texas-redistricting-plan and http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/us/federal-court-calls-texas-voting-maps-discriminatory.html?_r=2&ref=politics