Goodbye to One Man, One Vote

By Selwyn Duke

If you thought that “one man, one vote” reflected the full flowering of representative democracy, think again.  In the village of Port Chester, N.Y., just a few towns north of my locality in Westchester County, there is a new system.  It’s “one man, six votes” — brought to us courtesy of the U.S. Department of Injustice and a lunkhead of a federal judge named Stephen Robinson.

Here’s the story: In 2006, the Injustice Department alleged that Port Chester’s election system was “unfair.”  The problem?  While the village is almost half Hispanic, no Hispanic had ever been elected as a trustee. 

Now, how this hapless village got on the feds’ radar screen, I have no idea.  Were Hispanics intimidated into avoiding the polls?  Were there literacy tests?  Poll taxes?  No, this story will not inspire a movie by the name of Port Chester Burning.  Instead, it seems the problem Uncle Scam had was that the town’s slim white majority — which turns out to vote in greater numbers than their Latino neighbors (Hispanics also account for only about 20 percent of Port Chester’s voting-age population) — along with whatever Hispanics join them, have thus far chosen to elect only white candidates.  That pesky majority rule can be a real bummer, can’t it?

So the Injustice Department — using our tax money — dragged Port Chester into court, which, presumably, cost the village tax money in litigation costs (ain’t being a civil-rights lawyer grand?).  It’s enough to make you wonder if the Injustice Department has too much time and money on its hands, except that it doesn’t seem to have time to tackle real voter intimidation.  Remember that this is the bureaucracy that refused to pursue the case against the Black Panthers who tried to scare white voters away from a polling place in Philadelphia.

This brings us to Federal Judge Stephen Robinson.  He ruled — get the Digitalis — that the village’s practice of having conventional at-large elections violated the Voting Rights Act.  Now, let me put this in the simplest terms possible.  The Voting Rights Act’s purpose was to ensure that everyone would have the opportunity to vote.  Yet this “judge” decreed that “one man, one vote,” and the attendant majority rule, violate the act if they don’t yield a politically correct result.

And the kicker is Robinson’s remedy: He approved a plan to give every resident six votes, which they can apportion among the six trustees to be elected any way they wish.  It’s a scheme known as “cumulative voting.”  No, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.  Heck, I’m not even so sure we’re in America.

What’s the thinking?  I suppose the idea is that many Hispanics will exhibit great ethnic patriotism and give all their votes to one Hispanic candidate, whereas whites don’t vote as a block to the extent other groups do.  Perhaps we’re seeing an example of leftists nobly shouldering the Liberal White Man’s Burden.

Judge Robinson also ruled that Port Chester must allow residents to show up on any one of five days to cast ballots, a system called “in-person early voting.”

So first the left gave us quotas in schools and businesses, and now we have them in elections.  I wonder, if there is a locality in which whites are only 20 percent of the voting-age population, with a black majority that has never elected a white candidate, will the feds roll into town and work the same voodoo?  What if it’s an area that’s almost 50 percent female but that has never voted a woman into office?  Maybe we should just cut to the chase and mandate that public officials must reflect the demographic composition of their constituencies.

You could also say that this is the next step in the evolution of get-out-the-vote drives.  It used to be that such endeavors were merely geared toward motivating the ignorant and apathetic to cast ballots, as we know that such people will make thoroughly stellar voting decisions if we can only somehow cajole them into the polling place.  But this is so much simpler: Get out the vote by multiplying it.  We don’t need dead people in Chicago anymore — we have deadheads in the Injustice Department. 

Really, this scheme visited upon Port Chester is just another example of liberal bigotry. The leftist social engineers are again dividing people into groups, tacitly claiming that a person of one race cannot adequately represent a person of another, and changing the melting pot into a cauldron of ethnic tension.

So on Tuesday, June 15^th, there was an election in a village in New York.  In preparation, the locality had six forums in English and six in Spanish to explain a new, federally mandated scheme to the voters.  It created various ways of publicizing the election — with tote bags, lawn signs and tee shirts stating “Your voice, your vote, your village”; and reminders in the form of TV spots, brochures and handouts given to schoolchildren, in both English and Spanish — all of which had to be approved by the Department of  Injustice.  It also hired a “non-profit” election research and reform group called FairVote to provide consultation services (our tax money at work — again).  And, when it came time to cast the votes, “federal observers” were on site . . . watching. 

So once again the compassionate, inclusive left is Balkanizing us.  I just wonder what their quota prescription will be when it comes time to partition the nation.

   This article first appeared at American Thinker

       © 2010 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved

Comments

[Philip France]

Selwyn Duke asks:

"I wonder, if there is a locality in which whites are only 20 percent of the voting-age population, with a black majority that has never elected a white candidate, will the feds roll into town and work the same voodoo?"

The answer, my friend, can be observed in the hellhole that calls itself Detroit, Michigan. It is my understanding that a Republican has not run for mayor in more than 40 years. You have a choice of a far left mayor or a mayor that is farther to the left.

The result? Unfortunately, it is not the utopia promised by leftists and modern “liberals”. Rampant crime (I have been there on a number of occassions); an adult illiteracy rate of about 50%; a high school dropout rate of well over 50% (some districts had a dismal graduation rate of a mere 21.7%) and the corrupt Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick who is being fitted for an orange jump-suit.

Equality of opportunity is what we all should endeavor for. Modern “liberals” and leftists seek equality of results. This can only be achieved through oppression and bloodshed.

[Sue Blake]

How long will we allow these injustices to be done?????
How long will we play "door mat" and allow the Government to run over us ??? "Together we stand---Divided we fall"

[Doug H.]

So, after all that, were any Hispanics voted into office? If not, what will the government do next?

[jbailey]

The problem exist that the one man and one vote system has been the hall mark of our democracy, but goes against the grain of socialism and communism...not to mention sharia law. Decisions are made at the "ballot box". The sacredness of the ballot box becomes contaminated if a physical threat (Black Panther, KKK, union member,or anyone with an axe handle) stands at the door. Or, the numbers become objects of manipulation (registering dead folks to vote, re-zoning districts to capture more of one group than the other,etc.) When all else fails for these folks and the horizon looks bleak...or is interpreted by the "dept of injustice" as a hard sell...the principle is blatantly violated or manipulated by someone in power who thinks he has the ace. He takes one vote and multiplies it into several...with the idea that further manipulation of the "several" can "effect" his desired outcome. If you object, you may be subject to all the rant and rage of the legal system. The idea that the mention of God, the Bible, and particlarly the mention of Christ in the schools should be banned, was directly influenced by the threats of school boards being sued by an endless group of attorneys...not only school boards, but to the personal assets of the individual board members. This same principle or manipulative force now extends to "allowing" elementary school children...whose parents cannot say no..to recieve condoms in the public school. This force of threats from being sued now extends from our "noble leader" to the State of Arizona, where 70% of the population sought some refuge behind a legislative bill to stop the murder, drug smuggling, kidnaping, and rampage of their countryside by an invasion of illegals. He and his cohorts had not even read the bill.

I agree with everything that Philip and Sue have stated. Unless the ballot box is kept sacred, we will not have a dogs chance at reversing this socialist path.
Out of an extremely successful propaganda machine, and other manipulative forces, this nation has been led through a delusional system of utopian unreal promises and lies to elect a man of mystery...so steeped in socialism and communism from his parents, associations, friends and education...that it makes us wonder, "Was nobody looking or listening?" I pray that in this immediate future, we start soberly thinking, researching, evaluating, and knowing that outcomes cannot be guaranteed, only the opportunity to participate and to achieve with whatever God given talents our Maker has bestowed upon us...in a free enterprise capitalist system. It can be no other way, or else we wind up as numbers and slaves to a socialist/communist government.

[Laura]

It's no longer possible to deny that leftists are absolutely sick in the head. Or so mendacious that they are deliberately setting out to destroy America as we know it. Either way these people need to be removed from public office and future Stephen Robinson's need to be prevented from serving in any kind of public office. This judge needs to be impeached. What he ruled is unconstitutional.

[Laura L]

Doug H., I suppose the next move would be to simply do away with elections and appoint people to hold office who match the demographic makeup of the area.

[Philip France]

Laura,

Your most recent comment is prescient. That is exactly what the Obamunists have in mind: to do away with putatively democratic elections.

There is a bill being concocted by Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and John Conyers (D-MI) that is known as Universal Voter Registration. This is partly why the 2010 Census was transferrred from the oversight of the Department of the Interior to the White House Chief of Staff (namely, the incorrigibly evil Rahm Emmanuel).

The scope of this bill will allow illegal immigrants, prisoners and felons to have legal protection to vote (they will vote, by the research that I have studied, approximately 77% Democrat - which is to say Socialist/Marxist).

It is quite possible that the election of a questionable and inexperienced interloper named Barck Hussein Obama, II was the last democratic election of our once great Republic.

It is so delightful to see great women engage passionately in this debate. I firmly believe that it is women that now must save us. The Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual, Causcasian Crhistian male has been so demonized over the last 50 years that the MSM and academia has successfully and effictively emasculated us.

It is perhaps the time for ALL of us sober-minded Americans to take up our pitchforks,our lanterns and our axe-handles and to march on Washington, D.C. Perhaps it is time for us to accept the "course of human events" as defined in our Declaration of Independance and to "abolish" our government as this very same Declaration suggested.

Who among us has the ability to organize a 20-million-man march? The time is now.

[Doug H.]

Unofficial election results reported by Port Chester on its official website show that one Hispanic won a seat. Is that going to be enough to satisfy the Injustice Department, or will they require a 50/50 split?

http://www.portchesterny.com/Pages/PortChesterNY_EmerNews/015984BB-000F8513