Voting and Redistricting Lawsuit News
 Back to Voting Rights and Redistricting Lawsuit News
ACLU finishes case in voting rights trial
http://www.rapidcityjournal.com April 23, 2004
By Denise Ross, Journal Staff Writer
PIERRE - When Elsie Meeks was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in 1998, she said the campaign office got a series of telephone complaints that the party had chosen an American Indian for that position.
"They would call and say, ???We don't understand why Bernie has her on the ticket when we can't go onto her reservation and vote,'" Meeks testified in a voting rights trial on Thursday.
Meeks was the final witness for the American Civil Liberties Union after five days of testimony about race relations and voting patterns in South Dakota. She was the running mate of Bernie Hunhoff of Yankton, who ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Republican Gov. Bill Janklow six years ago.
Although Meeks and every Indian witness called by the ACLU testified about racial sentiment and their personal experiences with racism, the case hinges far more on numbers than on any act of discrimination.
The ACLU charges that, when the Legislature redrew legislative district boundaries in 2001, the state violated the federal Voting Rights Act. Specifically, the ACLU claims that legislative District 27, which includes most of the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian reservations, packs an unacceptable supermajority of Indians into one district. This situation, called "packing," takes away the opportunity for Indians to influence elections in more than one legislative district, the ACLU claims.
Federal judge Karen Schreier is hearing the case, which is scheduled to last into next week.
To prove that the state violated federal law, the ACLU must prove three factors laid out by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1986 case, Thornburg v. Gingles.
First, the minority group must demonstrate that it has enough population in a specific geographic area to create a majority that can elect at least one candidate generally preferred by the minority.
Second, the minority group must prove that it is politically cohesive and votes as a bloc.
Third, the minority group must show that the white majority population also votes as a bloc and tends to vote for different candidates than does the minority group. If all three points are proven, the judge must then consider the totality of circumstances, especially those factors unique to the local area in question, in deciding if a minority's voting rights have been violated. In this case, any history or pattern of anti-Indian sentiment would fall into that category.
But first, the judge must look at the numbers.
In District 27, American Indians comprise 90 percent of the total population and 86 percent of the voting-age population. In neighboring District 26, American Indians comprise 30 percent of the total population and 23 percent of the voting age population.
The ACLU wants to rearrange the two districts to give Indians a strong voice in both districts, and the group wants to carve out a single-member House district that would favor Indians in a newly configured District 26. Most legislative districts in South Dakota elect two House members and one senator.
The judge must decide whether the American Indian population is too high in District 27 or if the state's lawyers are correct when they say that that high of an Indian population is needed to elect state lawmakers who are Indian.
Lawyers from the South Dakota attorney general's office cite low voter turnout on reservations for state elections and a young population that, in all racial groups, tends to vote in small numbers.
For example, the state's lawyers argued in a brief in the case that in the 2000 general election, voter turnout was more than 68 percent. But in Todd and Shannon counties ??" both in District 27 ??" turnout was less than 40 percent.
State lawmakers considered this fact, state lawyers have argued, when they left the boundaries of District 27 as they had existed since 1980 despite a growing population of American Indians.
If the judge decides that the Indian population in District 27 exceeds what is needed for that group to elect its preferred candidates, she then would turn to the question of voting patterns and racial polarization.
Both the state and the ACLU have expert witnesses who have examined voting patterns on a precinct-by-precinct basis. The experts have reached different conclusions about voting patterns of the two races.
ACLU lawyers argued in a brief that their expert and the state's expert both found "overwhelming" cohesion among Indian voters. They argued that various forms of statistical analysis of 2002 elections in District 26 found that 86 percent of Indian voters voted the same way.
The ACLU argued that the state's expert incorrectly considered ballot issue elections in his analysis. Those elections do not have candidates and should not be studied to find voting patterns, the ACLU argued.
The state lawyers argued that their expert found polarized voting patterns among the two races in just 14 of 47 races in District 26.
"This is fewer than one-third of the total races analyzed," the lawyers wrote.
At the same time, Indians were cohesive in 24 of 47 races, and whites were cohesive in 24 of 47 races.
In some elections, the state's expert found racially polarized voting that resulted in the Indian-preferred candidate losing the election. He concluded it was not enough to constitute a pattern.
The state started its case late Thursday afternoon with two witnesses who testified briefly about the authenticity of some documents entered into evidence.
The first witness scheduled to testify today is Secretary of State Chris Nelson.
Contact Denise Ross at 394-8438 or denise.ross@rapidcityjournal.com
home : mission statement : contact : site map : search : store : links
DLN coalition : DLN issues : DLN nation : Any reprints are under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law : See http://www.dlncoalition.org/fair_use.htm.
|
Photograph--Alfred Bone Shirt Sr. wearing a peace medal.