Blacks violated Voting Rights Act, federal judge rules (Tried to keep whites from voting)

The Justice Department accused Mr. Brown of trying to limit whites' participation in local elections in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, written to protect racial minorities when Southern states strictly enforced segregation.

"Every American has the right to vote free from racial discrimination," said Wan J. Kim, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.

"The court's ruling is another victory in the department's vigorous efforts to protect the voting rights of all Americans," Mr. Kim said.

Noxubee County is a rural area along the Alabama line with a population of about 12,500, of whom 70 percent are black.

This case is actually old news, I’ve been aware of it for two years, but, this case is a perfect emblem of what the two-party system wrought in the South.

People in the South were not raised with the idea that elections are meant to be competitive races between two parties, or that a primary is where you nominate a “nominee” to compete in a general election. I considered myself a Republican during the Reagan era, but I did not vote in a Republican primary until 1994. Why? Because when the only districts in the legislature that are represented by Republicans are the wealthiest in the state, and when local races are always won by the Democratic candidate, then well, voting in a Republican primary would consitute a waste of your vote, and it did. The Republican Primary did not really have teeth in this state until 1998.

Brown’s argument is based on the idea that the Democratic primary in Noxubee is a nominating primary, where Democratic voters go to pick their parties nominees. And that concept works in the rest of the country, but here in the South, alot of people still equate primary voting to the election. I know in our county, roughly half of the votes in the 2006 general election were straight ticket votes. Meaning that there were floors below which no candidate could fall. Which makes it interesting when you measure the performance of individual candidates against the straight ticket vote.

But this illustrates the problem with Brown’s reasoning. The reason that the Noxubee County Democratic Primary cannot be considered a “nominating primary” is because demographic realities say that, all Democratic nominees will be elected in Noxubee County, meaning, in order for voters to have a vote in Noxubee County, they have to vote in the Democratic Primary.

This is also why Roy Moore lost. Many people, who consider themselves Republicans in our rural areas, basically had to vote in the Democratic Primary last year, because if they had voted in the Republican Primary, they would have forfeited their ability to have a voice in who would be their sheriff, as well as various other local offices. By contrast, in urban areas, many white voters who consider themselves Democrats ended up voting in the Republican primary, because, if they didn’t, they would also forfeit any voice they had in local races.

Our case is unique. For the most part, in our county, the Republican primary winner wins the countywide races now, the exceptions being holdovers from one party days. In general, these holdovers constitute the only Democrats I ever vote for, however, it is true that once they leave office, the Democrats will probably lose said offices. So, in voting in the Republican Primary last year, I got a vote in local races, who would be my governor, etc. The flip side of this is, in order to do this, I had to forgo my right to decide who represents me on the school board and in the state house of representatives, because for those offices, we are in majority black districts, where the race is decided in the Democratic Party.

The idea of the two-party south is a total myth. The reality is, we have two one-party systems. The Republican Party is the party of whites, with a 70-30 split, which ironically enough, was the split among white voters for the Democrats before the Depression. On the other hand, we have the Democratic Party as the party of blacks, with a 95-5 split. What party controls offices is determined almost entirely by factors of racial demographics, income level of the population, etc. It has zero to do with issue difference because well, there aren’t really many issue differences.

This is why Ike Brown’s actions were struck down. Now, I personally am opposed to the idea of the federal government intervening in state election practices, but still, in Noxubee County, Mississippi, the Democratic primary is the election, and therefore, requiring people to be partisans in order to vote in it is ludicrous, much in the same way that requiring people to be loyal Republicans in Winston County, Alabama elections is also ludicrous. Why, because, if you don’t vote in the Republican primary in Winston, you’re vote also fails to count.

The only Southern state where this issue doesn’t come up is Louisiana, because of the primary system they use.

I’ve actually been keeping up with this case for two years. Brown kept whites out of the Democratic primary, because Noxubees demographics are not so black as to the point where a black-white governing coalition (that presumably would Brown) cannot be formed

So, yes, it’s racism, but it’s racism rooted in political reality. If Mississippi moved off the closed primary system, it’s very probable that a black-white coalition would form, backing someone who called themself a Democrat, but, it could form and could easily take out his crowd. It’s more a mechanism of political control or anything else. If the voters in question were some other race not predisposed to supporting him, he’d still be doing this, though by doing it to whites, he can at least theoretically argue that all he is doing is preserving party unity. On it’s face, the argument actually holds up, because in most elections in Noxubee, the Dem vs Rep vote almost directly follows racial composition, and this is why Brown even has an argument.

Problem is, it’s all bull, because when Democratic candidates always win in Noxubee with 65% or more in the GE, that says, which election is the real important one. What motivates Brown is that if only 15% of the black population formed a coalition with white voters in the county, which presumably would vote in a strong block (as was the pattern in New Orleans election), then said candidate would win. That being said, Brown has actually been a leading figure in causing a split in the MDP this year, because he tried to have several longtime Democratic officeholders taken off the ballot because they were not “ideologically pure enough”

Brown has even come out on the record insulting what he considers “Dixiecrats”, and this describes most of the white Democrats in the party. I honestly think Brown is operating on barred time. And something else this article didn’t mention, he’s a convicted felon.

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