On November 30, three Hispanic voters in Compton, California, filed a lawsuit in state court to overturn that city’s at-large elections for city council. The case is Gonzalez v City of Compton, BC450494. Compton is in Los Angeles County and has a population that is 67.6% Hispanic, but no Hispanic has been elected to the city council since before 1999. The lawsuit depends on California’s Voting Rights Act of 2001. Here is the complaint.
Compton elects four city council members, and a Mayor, in at-large elections. However, four city council districts exist, and only one resident of each district may be elected. The Mayor and members of the council have 4-year terms, and there are two city council positions filled every two years.
If the > 2/3rds of the voters were Hispanic, and really wanted a Hispanic council member, they could certainly force that to happen.
Usually you see these cases when < 50% of the voters are members of a particularly minority, because it would be impossible for them to prevail in an at-large election.
So something's fishy, but the truth is buried in the complaint:
"Latinos represent 43.4% of the citizen voting age population in Compton."
Now this complaint makes a lot more sense… and I can already imagine the hateful commentary that will be written in Compton's local paper's comment sections.
The interesting part about the complaint is that it avoids mentioning that the non-Hispanic white population is about 1% of the population.
P.R. in all regimes.
Total Votes / Total Seats = EQUAL votes needed for each seat winner = REAL Democracy = both majority rule and minority representation.
Way too difficult for the armies of MORON gerrymander and at large math lawyers in a zillion cases since 1964 — a mere 46 years and counting.
First off, I find it interesting that both of the lawyers for these people are NOT from Los Angeles County. Do these lawyers have a history of filing these kinds of lawsuits. After all, they want to IMPOSE a racially based quota system for District’s in Compton’s City elections just like they used to use in the Soviet Union. Secondly, I notice that the Compton Unified School Board is not mentioned in the complaint. Does it already elect its members by District?
Third, which I find really fishy is why file NOW just a few months before the OFFICIAL 2010 Census reports on the racial components of the population come out. Are they afraid that the Census will show the Hispanic population living in Compton is substantially less than what they claim? Fourth, assuming that Latins do represent 43.4% of the citizen voting age population in Compton, since California is not a racist State that insists every voter lists their race when they register to vote, how does one find out EXACTLY how many currently registered voters in Compton are non-Black Latins?
Fifth, which category is appropriate to put the Black Latins from Caribbean countries? Sixth, in general it’s easier to get elected if you spend a lot more money than your opponents. So, have these Latin losers spent similar amounts in their election campaigns as the candidates who won?
Seventh, speaking of the elections themselves have any of these Latin losers campaigned on the issues most current with the residents who regularly vote in Compton’s city elections? Remember most city elections generally see less than 20% of the registered voters voting. Those people are the most political active and concerned in a jurisdiction and THEY are the ones a candidate must reach effectively to get elected.
I thought Compton was mainly African-American?
Oh well, things change.
#4 Joaquin Avila is formerly with Maldef. He is currently a law professor in Seattle, but his only active state bar membership is in California (he is also has an active bar member of various federal courts). His Seattle University bio states:
“His most significant accomplishment in the legislative arena was the passage of the 2001 California State Voting Rights Act. This Act permits challenges to discriminatory at-large methods of elections in state courts without having to prove a host of evidentiary factors as required under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. This is the only state voting rights act in the nation.”
Which explains why the case was filed in state court rather than federal court.
Both Avila and the law firm of Rosen, Bien, & Galvan were involved in the litigation to monkey wrench the special senate election to replace Abel Maldonado. As you may recall, after Lt.Governor Garamendi quit to become a congressman, Gov. Schwarzenegger named Sen. Maldonado to become Lt.Governor. The legislature refused to confirm Maldonado, and portrayed some underling running the Lt.Governor’s office as the acting Lt.Governor.
After the governor resubmitted Maldonado’s name, the legislature finally confirmed it almost 6 months after Garamendi had resigned. They timed the confirmation so that it was one week too late too hold the special primary election coincident with the June primary; but that if the governor took the maximum of 14 days before proclaiming the special general election it could be coincident with the November general election (recall that the triggering event was Garamendi’s election in November 2007).
The reason that this was done is that the 2/3 requirement for passing a budget was based on the number of elected senators (2/3 of 40 – one vacancy, is 26; while 2/3 of 40 is 27). Governor Schwarzenegger short-circuited this duplicitous hack-thuggery, by setting the special election on the shortest possible schedule.
A lawsuit was then filed on the basis of Section 5 of the VRA. Monterey County is a covered jurisdiction under Section 5 (based on low voter turnout from soldiers at Fort Ord in the 1970s, which was closed in 1994). While the VRA was the pretext, it was widely reported in the press that there were grubby Democrat hands backing the lawsuit. Basically, the USDOJ recognized that Monterey was handling the special election just fine and granted pre-clearance
(Monterey County had to move two voting locations, one because there was a wedding scheduled at a church; and the Big Sur lodge was not available, but a Grange Hall just down the highway could be used).
One can compare the situation in California to that in Louisiana, where Lt.Governor Mitch Landrieu resigned to become mayor of New Orleans, and the senate confirmed his replacement two days later. In both states you have a Republican governor and a Democratic-controlled senate, with a Democratic Lt. Governor resigning to take another office. In one, the governor’s choice is ratified in days, in the other it takes months, and the Democrats attempt to deny representation to 800,000 Californians for 1/2 a year. A difference is that Louisiana elects its legislature via the open primary, while California until just now uses a hyper-partisan primary system.
I don’t know whether the Democratic party is involved in the Compton litigation, unless it is the initial part of an effort to ease Maxine Waters out of Congress. More likely it is simply a Hispanic vs. Black turf battle.
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