(washingtontimes.com) KINSTON, N.C. | Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.
The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.
The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.
#1 – As of the 2000 census, the city of Kinston was made up of 35.27% White, 62.64% African American. So again, the decision was made by these two demographics to do away with party affiliations for the city.
#2 – How EXACTLY are voter rights being violated? Black folks, like anybody else can go where we want, when we want in this country. But based on this ruling and similar opinions in the past, we become frail and confused when it comes to the voting booth. Back in 2004, “Joanne Bland, the director and co-founder of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, Ala., told CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the new computerized voting machines are going to intimidate black voters in Florida and elsewhere and suppress their vote in the November presidential election because many blacks are not ‘technologically savvy.’
‘The computers really terrify me. The electronic voting — the new machines — I think it will turn off a segment in my community, particularly the elderly. We are not as technically savvy, and we are afraid of machines like that, and they (African-Americans) probably won’t go [to the polls] and they probably won’t ask for assistance, said Bland, who spent the last week in Florida.”
The article continues. I just talked about this recently.
In November’s election – one in which “hope” emerged as a central theme – the city had uncommonly high voter turnout, with more than 11,000 of the city’s 15,000 voters casting ballots. Kinston’s blacks voted in greater numbers than whites.
Whites typically cast the majority of votes in Kinston’s general elections. Kinston residents contributed to Barack Obama’s victory as America’s first black president and voted by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 to eliminate partisan elections in the city.
The measure appeared to have broad support among both white and black voters, as it won a majority in seven of the city’s nine black-majority voting precincts and both of its white-majority precincts.
When it came to voting in the general election, Blacks apparently had no problem turning out in large numbers (even outpacing Whites). But as I discussed the other day, when it comes to local elections not only is turnout typically low, but Blacks tend to one of the main demographic groups to be the least involved (Read this. Read this as well).
Are Democrats afraid that Blacks will vote THEIR interests instead of voting to keep party afloat?
Yes!
We have more power than we realize. We just don’t know how to effectively use it. In the meantime, the political world has known how to use it for decades.
UPDATE: Someone reminded me of this article on Facebook.
Why African-Americans Must Be Patient With Obama (Newsweek, 1/24/09)
Did Newsweek write a similar article for Whites? Or are Blacks expected to be the loyal class of the Democratic Party?
