On April 9, a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., stopped the scheduled May 11, 2013 election for School Board in Beaumont, Texas, under the federal Voting Rights Act. The case is Beaumont Independent School District v U.S., civ 13-401. The reason the election was stopped is that the School District, and a Texas State Court of Appeals, had ruled that all seven seats should be up for election in May, yet this decision was not made until after the candidate qualification period had closed. Some of the incumbent members of the Board had not filed for re-election because, under the old rules, their seats weren’t up. Under the new rules, their seats were up, but they had not had a chance to file to be on the ballot.
The election will now be held in November 2013.
The school board is playing games.
In May 2011 voters approved a switch to 5 district members plus two at-large members. The school board, which is responsible for drawing the district lines didn’t bother to do so until May of 2012, and then waited a few more months before seeking preclearance.
The USDOJ twiddled around and finally rejected the proposed 5-2 plan in late December. There had not been redistricting after the 2010 Census, so they created a new 7-0 plan a mere 7 days before the filing deadline, and at the same time submitted it to the USDOJ for “pre”-clearance. Obviously, they hoped that the USDOJ would go along and “pre”-clear the election before voting actually began. The USDOJ has said it has concerns about one district being insufficiently segregated.
There were two districts way out of line in terms of population. But rather than make the minimal changes to balance the population, which would have meant moving about 9% of the population, they did a radical restructuring in which 45% of voters were shifted into new districts. In three of the districts, more than half of the residents are new. These three districts were not scheduled for a new election. The “voting rights” that are being protected are purely hypothetical, not the right to actually elect the representative from each district.
On the last day of filing, several candidates filed in the districts which had been denied elections, even though they were radically modified. After the school district refused to accept the filing, the new candidates filed suit in state court, which ruled that all districts should have been on the ballot.
The school board then sued the US Government. When a government entity seeks preclearance, they can either seek preclearance from the USDOJ or sue the government in the DC district court. The school board lost, but they aren’t displeased, other than they may actually have to seek election from new districts.