THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060362
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE LENGTH: Long : 104 lines
A city-funded analysis of voting patterns here seems to support charges made last year by the Department of Justice: that Chesapeake's at-large election system has resulted in a pattern of racially polarized voting.
The study, released Wednesday, found that blacks and whites cast ballots in distinct blocs in almost every election in the past decade, and that white voters as a group rarely supported black candidates.
But the study concluded that white bloc voting did not ``inevitably'' spell defeat for candidates favored by blacks.
When African Americans turn out to vote in rates similar to their white counterparts, the study found, they succeed in electing their preferred candidates.
The results both reinforce and contradict conclusions reached by the Department of Justice in June 1994, when the agency denied Chesapeake's request to implement an at-large voting system for the city's first School Board elections.
The 1965 Voting Rights Act requires Virginia and most other Southern states to seek federal permission before changing any election law.
The Justice Department charged the city with a history of ``persistent and severe polarization along racial lines'' in a similar at-large system used to elect the mayor and the city council.
That polarization diluted black voting power and violated the Voting Rights Act, according to the federal agency, and would not be acceptable in the School Board elections.
Justice Department officials suggested instead the creation of ward voting districts, which they have argued would give blacks a better chance of being elected.
Such a system would carve the city into distinct voting districts with at least two or three that would be designed to be black majority.
But Hunton & Williams, a Richmond-based law firm retained by the city to ask the Justice Department to reconsider, argued in papers filed with the Justice Department that the agency had no legal basis for objecting to Chesapeake's at-large system.
The written request to reconsider, which was dated June 28 and included the voting study, said the Justice Department had overstepped its authority in denying an at-large system ``because (it) believes another option would be better for minority voters.''
The petition argued that the city's at-large method passes the only relevant litmus test endorsed recently by the Supreme Court and federal district courts.
That, they argued, boils down to the question: Will the at-large system Chesapeake has proposed leave blacks worse off?
In the case of Chesapeake's School Board, the law firm argued, the answer is a resounding `no.'
``Minority citizens of the city are going from an appointive system in which they have no elective power at all to a system where they can elect or significantly influence the election of all nine members of the School Board,'' contended the appeal, signed by Hunton & Williams attorney Anne Gordon Greever. ``Their electoral power has clearly increased, not diminished.''
In other words, Gordon Greever argued, the Justice Department can't keep Chesapeake from implementing an at-large system simply because the system would not increase black voting strength to the maximum possible degree, or because the federal agency believes another system would be better for blacks.
The petition also argued that the Justice Department's claims that the city is racially polarized are refuted by the results of the voting study and ``broad-based public support'' for at-large elections in the African-American community.
While African Americans make up only 25.6 percent of the voting population, the petition argued, ``minority-preferred candidates have comprised at least 33 percent, and for some periods 55.5 percent, of the elected Council members.''
In an interview Wednesday evening, Mayor William E. Ward said the law firm's case exaggerated support for at-large elections in the black community.
``They gave a lot of credence to Larry Brayboy and Lamont Simmons,'' Ward said of the black School Board member and planning commissioner who wrote letters in favor of at-large elections that were filed with the petition. ``But they ignored what the rest of the majority of African Americans are saying. They didn't include that at all.''
Ward, who supports a ward system, said he was misrepresented in the document.
In stating the city's case, Gordon Greever pointed out that Ward had supported at-large elections. He was elected mayor in such a vote.
But Ward said she failed to explain when and why he had changed his position.
Since the decision last June, a majority of Chesapeake City Council members have resisted the Justice Department's push to divide the city into wards for School Board elections.
Council members have opposed them as a sweeping federal mandate that ignores Chesapeake's history in race relations and goes too far in trying to impose exact, proportional equity between the races.
Council member John E. Allen, who had not yet read the city's petition Thursday, said he stood by his belief that Chesapeake does not discriminate.
``I just look back at the history of Chesapeake,'' Allen said, ``and I don't see any pattern of racism in any race shape or form. In fact, when it comes to councilmembership, I would say that Chesapeake is ahead.''
KEYWORDS: AT-LARGE VOTING CHESAPEAKE by CNB