Daily Caller - A U.S. District Court judge has rejected a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — filled when the Department of Justice barred the city of Kinston, N.C. from holding nonpartisan elections — reasoning that lack of access to party affiliation would discriminate against minority voters who otherwise wouldn’t know how to find Democratic candidates on a ballot. The challenge was initiated after the Justice Department rejected a 2008 referendum vote in which the city of Kinston voted to stop listing candidates’ party affiliations on ballots. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the Justice Department must approve changes to election law in regions with a history, however distant, of racial discrimination. The Justice Department prevented the 2008 referendum change, arguing in part that “the elimination of party affiliation on the ballot will likely reduce the ability of blacks to elect candidates of choice.” Advocates for nonpartisan elections including Republican state representative Stephen LaRoque and several other Kinston residents subsequently sued the Justice Department, challenging the constitutionality of Section 5.
“When it comes to questions of federalism, there may not be a bigger intrusion into state sovereignty than the Voting Rights Act,” The John Locke Foundation, a conservative North Carolina think tanks, wrote in a recent newsletter. “There’s simply no basis for requiring certain jurisdictions to get pre-approval of voting procedures more than 45 years after the Voting Rights Act was passed.” Read full story here: News New Mexico
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