PAGE 30 PROGRAM SUCCESS – AUGUST 2010
VOTER RIGHTS
continued from page 7
As you may recall, my election to Congress in 1992 was made
possible because a federal court held that the previous district
plan violated Article I, § 2 of the United States Constitution, the
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the
United States Constitution, the one person, one vote principle,
and the Voting Rights Act. (See DeGrandy v. Wetherell, 794 F.
Supp. 1076 (N.D. Fla 1992).) In 1996, the district was
challenged as racially gerrymandered, was redrawn and has
remained relatively intact since then despite challenges. (See
Johnson v. Mortham, 950 F. Supp. 1117 (N.D. Fla 1996).
In other words, even though the district as it stands was not
specifically designed to favor any particular race, the
communities of interest it contains affords minorities the
opportunity to elect their preferred candidate, as they have
done consistently for nearly twenty years. Therefore, the
residents of my district are entitled to the protections of the
Voting Rights Act and I joined this lawsuit because
Amendments Five and Six threaten those protections.
Under the proposed amendments, districts cannot be drawn
with the intent to favor or disfavor an incumbent or a party.
Furthermore, districts must be compact and utilize existing
political and geographical boundaries. The amendments
Congresswoman Corrine Brown and Congressman
John Lewis with Darryl and Gwen Barrs, Publishers
of the Program Success Magazine
attempt to incorporate language from the VRA by stating that
boundaries cannot be drawn in ways that deny or abridge the
equal opportunity of minorities to participate in the political
process or diminish their ability to elect representatives of their
choice. That language will prove to be a smokescreen.
Due to the history of legalized racism in Florida and the
settlement patterns it produced, however, all these goals cannot
be met. In order to preserve the ability of minority voters to
elect their candidates of choice, districts must be drawn in a
way that recognizes where minorities live and accounts for the
person or party voters have actually chosen in the past. If the
legislature ignored incumbency or party and drew lines by
county or some other geographic feature, minority voters
would be dispersed and their voting power submerged – a clear
violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 15th Amendment.
Under § 2 of the VRA, violations can be proved by showing
discriminatory effect alone – intent is not relevant. (See
Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986).
While this argument may seem simplistic, this so-called reform
really does break down to the proponents wanting to have it
both ways: they claim to preserve minority voting rights and at
the same time create districts that follow arbitrary geographical
boundaries. Unfortunately, because discrimination produced a
widely dispersed minority population, both goals cannot be
achieved. The VRA and Constitution make the choice clear: the
ability of minorities to elect their preferred candidates of choice
must be preserved.
One goal of the Voting Rights Act was remediation of past
discrimination and the legal rights of many, many residents of
the 3rd District to elect a person of their choice would be
violated if this intent were ignored in favor of districts that look
better on a map. I am sure you recall that before 1992, the last
African American from Florida in Congress was Josiah Walls
of Gainesville, who lost his seat in 1876. We must not return to
the time when our voice cannot be heard and I will do
everything in my power to prevent that from happening.