Thread: NY Village has new voting rules

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/56809

NY Village Gets New Voting Rules to Aid Hispanics
Friday, November 06, 2009
By Jim Fitzgerald, Associated Press

White Plains, N.Y. (AP) A federal judge imposed an unusual election system on a suburban village Friday, nearly two years after finding that the existing system was unfair to Hispanics.

The village, Port Chester, is run by a mayor and six trustees. Under the new system, called cumulative voting, residents will be allowed to cast as many as six votes for one trustee candidate.

No Hispanic had ever been elected trustee or mayor in the village 25 miles northeast of New York City, although the population of 28,000 is about half Hispanic. The ruling is likely to mean that the village will have trustee elections next year for the first time since 2006.

Village officials said they were elated that Judge Stephen Robinson had not ordered that Port Chester be divided into districts.

"We got our preferred remedy of choice," said village attorney Anthony Piscionere.

Under cumulative voting, all six trustee positions would be at stake in each election and voters would have six votes each. A voter could cast six votes for one candidate, one for each of six candidates, or any other combination of six or fewer votes.

Lawyers said last year that cumulative voting was not used for municipal elections anywhere else in New York.

Both sides told the judge Friday they would work together to come up with a plan to implement the new system and educate voters about it. The judge said he hoped elections could be held in June.

"Port Chester is committed to making this a model," Piscionere said.

In January 2008, Robinson ruled in favor of a Justice Department lawsuit that said Port Chester's existing system violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Hispanics' votes.

Under the outlawed system, two of Port Chester's six trustee seats were up each election year and the entire village chose from the candidates. Most voters were white, and white candidates always won.

After ruling in the federal government's favor, the judge asked both sides to suggest a new system that would solve the problem. Meanwhile, elections were suspended.

The Justice Department's plan would have divided the village into six districts, with each electing one trustee. One district would be drawn to include Hispanic neighborhoods, increasing the chances that a Hispanic-backed candidate would be elected.

Port Chester officials, however, noted that because many Hispanics are not citizens, the special Hispanic district would have fewer eligible voters than other districts. That would violate the one-person, one-vote requirement of the Constitution, village attorneys said.

The village also said cumulative voting would be more likely to elect more than one Hispanic-backed trustee. And it would spare the village the expense of drawing new boundaries, redrawing them every 10 years and maintaining multiple polling places.

Currently, the village Board of Trustees has three holdovers from before 2006, two appointees picked by the other members and one vacancy.

Nope. Makes no sense. Unless they are saying that only hispanics can vote six times. If everyone can vote six times, then the outcome would be the same, right? If they are saying that hispanics can vote six times, but everyone else can only vote once then there is going to be one BIG AZZ PROBLEM. And they have so many illegals ....thats why they need to discriminate? OMG...now I have heard every gd thing.

Red Pony-- assume 5000 voters--per the estimate, about half are Hispanic. If you have ever worked a campaign you would understand. The six votes for a candidate is called in old campaign parlance a "Bullet". The word is spread among the Hispanic community and the half of the town that is Hispanic casts all their votes for two Hispanic (God knows--maybe even legal) candidates--presto -two out of six Hispanic trustees. Anglos are too sophisticated to stoop to such tricks--sarcasm intended. The reality is that most residents will do their honest duty and vote for the candidate they think right,. They are the ones who will wind up with the diluted vote and eventually Port Chester will be managed by an all Hispanic board. The laws and rules will be changed , it will become another sancuary location in America. From there

Math: assume 2000 Hispanic voters and 3000 others. The 3000 other will be spread amongst, most probably, 4 to 8 non Hispanic candidates. The 2000 will cast half their votes for each candidate. Thus the Hispanic candidates will wind up with 6000 votes each while (assuming even distribution), the non Hispanic candidates will split 18000 (6 x 3000 voters) 4 to 8 ways. Using 6 as the median number of candidates, again assuming even distribution, the non Hispanics will get 3000 votes each.

Result--more Hispanics will be drawn to live in an Hispanic friendly community--next campaign 2200 Hispanic voters then the next tiome 2400 Hispanic voters. Americans will emigrate to farther suburbs as we have been doing for years and over time another almost community removed from America and private property sold at a loss by Americans who want to live in an American community. I refuse to believe this is due to unintended consequences. It is again an act by those in power to continue the path of destruction for the citizens of the USA.

How many lives must be ruined for diversity. How many judges will change Constitutional and or local American laws to achieve their dream of a global society.?

Originally Posted by misterbill

Red Pony-- assume 5000 voters--per the estimate, about half are Hispanic. If you have ever worked a campaign you would understand. The six votes for a candidate is called in old campaign parlance a "Bullet". The word is spread among the Hispanic community and the half of the town that is Hispanic casts all their votes for two Hispanic (God knows--maybe even legal) candidates--presto -two out of six Hispanic trustees. Anglos are too sophisticated to stoop to such tricks--sarcasm intended. The reality is that most residents will do their honest duty and vote for the candidate they think right,. They are the ones who will wind up with the diluted vote and eventually Port Chester will be managed by an all Hispanic board. The laws and rules will be changed , it will become another sancuary location in America. From there

Math: assume 2000 Hispanic voters and 3000 others. The 3000 other will be spread amongst, most probably, 4 to 8 non Hispanic candidates. The 2000 will cast half their votes for each candidate. Thus the Hispanic candidates will wind up with 6000 votes each while (assuming even distribution), the non Hispanic candidates will split 18000 (6 x 3000 voters) 4 to 8 ways. Using 6 as the median number of candidates, again assuming even distribution, the non Hispanics will get 3000 votes each.

Result--more Hispanics will be drawn to live in an Hispanic friendly community--next campaign 2200 Hispanic voters then the next tiome 2400 Hispanic voters. Americans will emigrate to farther suburbs as we have been doing for years and over time another almost community removed from America and private property sold at a loss by Americans who want to live in an American community. I refuse to believe this is due to unintended consequences. It is again an act by those in power to continue the path of destruction for the citizens of the USA.

How many lives must be ruined for diversity. How many judges will change Constitutional and or local American laws to achieve their dream of a global society.?

Excellent explanation misterbill and the answer to your last question is "as many as it takes until the will of the people is entirely broken."

Misterbill: there will only be more votes, but the percentage will be the same. The hispanic candidates would only have to share the hispanic votes between the two of them. The other candidates would have to share the rest of the votes among more candidates.

Furthermore, there are 2000 hispanics in your scenario...but many cant vote. That is the issue, they are not citizens. So although they make up almost half the population, they cant vote. If everyone is given the same number of votes, the percentage comes out the same. Because as the hispanic population has six votes, so does the non hispanic population.

The onlydifference I can see is that IF a hispanic candidate wins, actually it could end up being two hispanic candidates that win, not just one. That is the only difference. BUT that is providing that ALL eligible hispanics get out and vote, AND that each and every one of them votes for the hispanic candidate.

They can't vote??? Wanna bet???

I'm not trying to be a wiseguy here, but you are missing the math--because you assume that most cannot vote. My scenario was 2000 voters--Hispanic, legal or illegal.
The bullet is not the only old campaign trick. Getting a legal Hispanic or two at the precinct where the Hispanics vote will get a lot of illegal votes. Plus here is the info:

Races in Port Chester:

* Hispanic (46.2%)
* White Non-Hispanic (42.8%)
* Other race (23.0%)
* Black (7.0%)
* Two or more races (6.8%)
* Asian Indian (0.9%)
* American Indian (0.7%)

(Total can be greater than 100% because Hispanics could be counted in other races)

You tell me how many are illegal?? Then tell Maria and Juan and Jose the poll workers. I am sure they will prevent them from voting. As sure as I am that man is responsible for Global Warming.

Please, I am not looking for an argument--perhaps I should have posted the numbers above instead of using hypothetical numbers.

I guarantee you--that as soon as there are two Hispanics on the board and the rules of play are changed, so too will the population.

There are 28, 171 people in Port Chester. That's 13,015 Hispanics and 12057 whites. I do not have age data at this time. And I believe no one has or will have illegal immigrant data. As to voters--how many people buried in the Port Chester cemetery??
Why will the percentage stay the same?? Certainly not because non Hispanics will flock to Port C because they want to live in a town that has a fouled up voting system. Next==you can bet your bippy that every eligible legal or illegal Hispanic that can get away with it will vote and us lazy American will have a much lower active voter rate--as has been proven time and again.

The issue is the judge has no right to rig elections so that it favors any race, religion or ethnicity. It spits in the face of America. He should be removed from the bench. He is , over time, giving Port C to a specific ethnic group. Yes, the non Hispanics can fight back. Do you honestly believe they have the same dedication as the invaders??? What next?? All classes in Spanish. No- I a m not stretching it--think about it--they will get the same rule for the school board. After a few years -it will be Acapulco in Port Chester New York.

The new voting system does not allow illegals to vote. If illegals will vote (and they might) under the new voting system, then they would have also voted under the old voting system. It only gives EVERYONE more votes. It does not only give hispanics more votes, but EVERYONE. That being the case, the final percentages will be the same.

And since they havent voted in a hispanic candidate yet, they wont be able to simply because they give ALL THE CITIZENS more votes. The only way they can change the end percentages is if they only give six votes to hispanics. And it does not appear that is the case.

I really dont know what hispanics in that area hope to achieve with this new system. In fact, it will work against them because the more they complain, the less welcome they will be. And when you have one group trying to change things so that they can become dominant....whether it works or not....the other group or groups will fight that endeavor.

I will give it one more try. You can choose to argue the numbers of voters since neither of us has that information at this time.
But here goes:

Assume all residents legal---
Assume 1 out of 4 of voting age

this means 13015/4= 3254 voters
12057/4 = 3015 voters

Case 1:
6 candidates 1 Hispanic

All Hispanics vote for their candidate= 3254

The other 5 candidates for purposes
of mathematics here split evenly = 3015/5= 603 votes each.

Result: 1 Hispanic trustee

Case 2: 6candidates 2 Hispanic

All Hispanics vote 3 votes each
Hispanic candidate =3254/2=1627 votes

Other 4 +3015/4=754 votes

Result 2 Hispanic candidates.

Shall I continue??

The next year another 200 Hispanic voters move into town as dispirited Americans migrate to the real burbs. It does not matter if it is one , two or two hundred it still takes from pile A and moves it to pile B with a 6x multiplier. No persons should be allowed to vote 6 times for the same person.
Think of it as Affirmative Action for Hispanic voters and against non Hispanic voters

I think you can see that 1200 non Hispanic votes are lost while 1200 Hispanic votes are gained.

If we are not in agreement, let it end here.
Again, I think you will think I am a hard** but I asked my wife to sit and read this because I thought maybe I was not entering it correctly. She got it and said she believed that was what would happen..

PS I haven't even touched on false IDs or false addresses or any of the other tricks that occur.

The same thing would happen if everyone had only one vote. Still the non hispanic candidates have to split the white vote among themselves. Still illegals would try to vote....yadda yadda. It is just more votes, but not a higher percentage of the population. Btw, you said I was arguing numbers. Actually I am arguing percentages. You are arguning numbers. In the end the percentages are the same. There are still the same percent of hispanic voters and white voters. Giving them more votes does not change the percentages.

"Assume all residents legal---"


Misterbill:

You know and I know that all the residents are not legal....only some of them are. That is the issue to begin with. Why in hell would I assume all of the residents are legal. Makes no sense. So your theory is based on the false assumption that all of the residents are legal. Mine is based on the fact that they are not. The article says they are not. THAT IS THE PROBLEM....THEY ARE NO LEGALLY HERE AND CANT VOTE. And many of the ones who are here legally, ARE NOT CITIZENS. That is why they are underrepresented. That is the reason to change the voting system in the first place.