THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410290006
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
The Justice Department has served notice that it intends to financially blackmail Virginia cities and towns into changing their electoral systems by threatening them with financially ruinous lawsuits if they do not comply. That has become a familiar pattern here in Hampton Roads, but familiarity does not mean it is the correct policy prescription. It would be ironic if the federal government's efforts resulted in racial polarization rather than harmony.
Newport News agreed on Thursday to create a ward system and to elect its mayor directly by at-large vote, and the other six members of its City Council from three wards electing two members each. That would replace the current system where all seven council members are elected at-large and the council then elects the mayor.
No doubt Newport News officials considered what happened when the city of Norfolk tried to fight the Justice Department on the same issue and lost after a years-long court battle that cost the city millions of dollars. Justice also appears to be zeroing in on Chesapeake as well.
What is at war here are two different constitutional principles. One is the right to vote and the other is the right of a locality under the federal system to decide what form of government it will have. Overriding the latter to secure the former can be justified, but the federal government ought to have to prove that the locality has made efforts to effectively deprive people of their right to vote.
But that is not the case in Newport News, where blacks have won and held local office for years. The only justification for Justice's intervention is to guarantee a proportional number of black members of the City Council.
But there is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees the outcome of an election. It also implies that black voters can only be effectively represented by black officials, and white voters by white officials. How, then, does Justice explain L. Douglas Wilder? Or Democratic Rep. Alan Wheat of Missouri and Republican Rep. Gary Franks of Connecticut, both of whom represent mostly white districts? Or J.C. Watts, who is likely to be elected a Republican representative from a largely white district in Oklahoma?
The Supreme Court, unlike the Justice Department, seems to recognize the emerging reality that larger electoral jurisdictions can foster cross-racial coalitions. In its most recent decisions, the court has been backing off from suggestions that ``voting rights'' equals proportional representation.
The denial of voting rights to black Americans was a national disgrace. We are striving to create a society in which common interests unite people. Justice's action seems almost calculated to drive them further apart. by CNB