Daistallia 2104
14-10-2006, 14:30
... that's been turned on it's head.
The short version: the US Justice department has brought suit against the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee, a mostly ethnically black county, for "relentless voting- related racial discrimination" against whites.
Well, this is an interesting departure from the norm....
Opinions and/or comments, anyone?
In U.S., voting rights cut both ways
By Adam Nossiter The New York Times
Published: October 11, 2006
MACON, Mississippi The U.S. Justice Department has chosen this no- stoplight town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.
The action represents a sharp shift in four decades of policy, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is going after blacks for vote fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks' right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.
The Justice Department's main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles, or 160 kilometers, away.
Brown is tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss. He is also accused by the federal government of orchestrating - with the help of others - "relentless voting- related racial discrimination" against whites, outnumbered by blacks by more than 3 to 1 in the county.
His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians - ones supported by Brown, that is - in office.
To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.
Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in court papers of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.
To run against the county prosecutor - one of two white officeholders in Noxubee - Brown brought in a black lawyer from outside the county, according to court papers, who never bothered to turn on the natural gas or electricity at his rented apartment.
Whites, who make up just under 30 percent of the population of Noxubee county, are circumspect when discussing Brown, though he remains a hero to many blacks. When he drove off to a federal prison to serve a sentence for tax fraud in 1995, he received a grand farewell from his political supporters and friends, including local elected officials; whites here, on the other hand, for years have seen him as a kind of occult force in determining the affairs of the county. But many of them said privately that they welcomed the Justice Department's lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial early next year.
"In my opinion, it puts the focus on fair play," said Roderick Walker, the county prosecutor Brown tried to oust. "They were doing something wrong."
Up and down South Jefferson Street, though, in the old brick commercial district, white merchants refused to be quoted, for fear of alienating black customers. "There's a lot of voting irregularities, but that's all I'm going to say," one woman said, ending the conversation abruptly.
The Justice Department's voting rights expert is less reserved.
"Virtually every election provides a multitude of examples of these illegal activities organized by Ike Brown and other defendants, and those who act in concert with them," Theodore Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, wrote in a report filed with the court.
Brown is coolly dismissive of the case against him. He has no office at the white-columned Noxubee County Courthouse in Macon, but that is where he casually greets visitors, sitting in a chair near the entrance. A loquacious man, he both minimizes his own role and portrays himself as a central target. Far from being the vital orchestrator portrayed by the government, "when I was in Maxwell prison in '95 and '96, the show went right on," he said.
There are so few whites in the county, Brown suggests, that the tactics alleged by the department are unnecessary to keep blacks in office.
"They can't win anyway unless we choose to vote for them," he said with a smile. "If I was doing something wrong - that's like closing the barn door when the horse is already gone."
He sees the lawsuit against him as merely the embittered reaction of disenfranchised whites, and he scoffs at a consent decree signed last year in which county officials agreed not to harass or intimidate white candidates or voters, manipulate absentee ballots or let poll workers coach voters, among other things. "I wouldn't sign my name," Brown said.
But the Justice Department is pressing ahead with its suit and wants to force Brown to agree to the same cease- and-desist conditions as his fellow county officials.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/11/news/vote.php
The short version: the US Justice department has brought suit against the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee, a mostly ethnically black county, for "relentless voting- related racial discrimination" against whites.
Well, this is an interesting departure from the norm....
Opinions and/or comments, anyone?
In U.S., voting rights cut both ways
By Adam Nossiter The New York Times
Published: October 11, 2006
MACON, Mississippi The U.S. Justice Department has chosen this no- stoplight town buried in the eastern Mississippi prairie for an unusual civil rights test: the first federal lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act accusing blacks of suppressing the rights of whites.
The action represents a sharp shift in four decades of policy, and it has raised eyebrows outside the state. The government is going after blacks for vote fraud in a state whose violent rejection of blacks' right to vote, over generations, helped give birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Yet within Mississippi the case has provoked knowing nods rather than cries of outrage, even among liberal Democrats.
The Justice Department's main focus is Ike Brown, a local power broker whose imaginative electoral tactics have for 20 years caused whisperings from here to the state capital in Jackson, 100 miles, or 160 kilometers, away.
Brown is tall, thin, a twice-convicted felon, the chairman of the Noxubee County Democratic Executive Committee and its undisputed political boss. He is also accused by the federal government of orchestrating - with the help of others - "relentless voting- related racial discrimination" against whites, outnumbered by blacks by more than 3 to 1 in the county.
His goal, according to the government: keeping black politicians - ones supported by Brown, that is - in office.
To do that, the department says, he and his allies devised a watertight system for controlling the all-determining Democratic primary, much as segregationists did decades ago.
Brown is accused in the lawsuit and in court papers of paying and organizing notaries, some of whom illegally marked absentee ballots or influenced how the ballots were voted; of publishing a list of voters, all white, accompanied by a warning that they would be challenged at the polls; of importing black voters into the county; and of altering racial percentages in districts by manipulating the registration rolls.
To run against the county prosecutor - one of two white officeholders in Noxubee - Brown brought in a black lawyer from outside the county, according to court papers, who never bothered to turn on the natural gas or electricity at his rented apartment.
Whites, who make up just under 30 percent of the population of Noxubee county, are circumspect when discussing Brown, though he remains a hero to many blacks. When he drove off to a federal prison to serve a sentence for tax fraud in 1995, he received a grand farewell from his political supporters and friends, including local elected officials; whites here, on the other hand, for years have seen him as a kind of occult force in determining the affairs of the county. But many of them said privately that they welcomed the Justice Department's lawsuit, which is scheduled for trial early next year.
"In my opinion, it puts the focus on fair play," said Roderick Walker, the county prosecutor Brown tried to oust. "They were doing something wrong."
Up and down South Jefferson Street, though, in the old brick commercial district, white merchants refused to be quoted, for fear of alienating black customers. "There's a lot of voting irregularities, but that's all I'm going to say," one woman said, ending the conversation abruptly.
The Justice Department's voting rights expert is less reserved.
"Virtually every election provides a multitude of examples of these illegal activities organized by Ike Brown and other defendants, and those who act in concert with them," Theodore Arrington, chairman of the political science department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, wrote in a report filed with the court.
Brown is coolly dismissive of the case against him. He has no office at the white-columned Noxubee County Courthouse in Macon, but that is where he casually greets visitors, sitting in a chair near the entrance. A loquacious man, he both minimizes his own role and portrays himself as a central target. Far from being the vital orchestrator portrayed by the government, "when I was in Maxwell prison in '95 and '96, the show went right on," he said.
There are so few whites in the county, Brown suggests, that the tactics alleged by the department are unnecessary to keep blacks in office.
"They can't win anyway unless we choose to vote for them," he said with a smile. "If I was doing something wrong - that's like closing the barn door when the horse is already gone."
He sees the lawsuit against him as merely the embittered reaction of disenfranchised whites, and he scoffs at a consent decree signed last year in which county officials agreed not to harass or intimidate white candidates or voters, manipulate absentee ballots or let poll workers coach voters, among other things. "I wouldn't sign my name," Brown said.
But the Justice Department is pressing ahead with its suit and wants to force Brown to agree to the same cease- and-desist conditions as his fellow county officials.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/11/news/vote.php