All else is JUNK — cumulative voting, etc.

The district court found that only 2 of 3 Gingles conditions were met: (1) that the minority was geographically compact enough that it could constitute a majority in a single-member district; and (2) that the minority voted cohesively as a bloc.

But the district court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to show that (3) the majority voted cohesively as a bloc to prevent election of the minority-preferred candidates.

A 3-judge panel of the appeals court overruled the district court on the 3rd condition, and the full court did not rehear the case.

On remand, the district court ordered cumulative voting, even though it had earlier found that there was a way to draw a minority majority district that did not appear to be too horrible nor deliberately segregated voters.

Martin only has about 50 city blocks of residential areas, so I suspect that the plans were not so wonderful. In small towns, economic residential segregation may not be so harsh as in metropolitan areas. As noted in the minority appeals court opinion, the model plans presented by the plaintiffs only created districts that were barely over 50% minority. So it may have not been a case of picking “areas” that were 60% minority over “areas” that is 40% minority. But in a small town, this might mean taking a block where 6 of the 10 houses had minority occupants, vs. 4 of 10. And such variation on a small scale may have a high random element.

A 3-member panel affirmed the district court’s order of cumulative voting.

The full court then reconsidered, and decided not only to limit their decision to the proposed remedy, but also the finding of discrimination by the 3-judge panel.

The 7-4 majority found that the original trial judge had ruled correctly in finding that there was not a VRA violation, so the remedy was moot. The minority opinion was that the full court should not have reconsidered the first decision by the 3-judge panel after declining to do so in the first place several years ago. But they would have sent the case back to the district court to reconsider the decision to impose comulative voting in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in NC.

Would the use of cumulative voting force a voter to use all 3 votes on no more than 3 candidates? Maybe a person in a large (10 or more) candidate field prefers 4 or 5 candidates from a candidate block. Admittedly, voting for more than 3 would reduce the vote’s value each candidate would earn in the balloting. Still, some voters might be willing to take the chance rather than leaving out someone that they were comfortable with should they win the election.