Nov. 6, 2007, 9:51PM
Dallas suburb sued over council election system


© 2007 The Associated Press


IRVING, Texas — A voting rights lawsuit against the city of Irving alleges its at-large election system keeps Hispanics from being represented in local government.

The lawsuit filed late Tuesday asks a federal court to disband the at-large system in the Dallas suburb and establish a new method to elect city council members, The Dallas Morning News reported in its online edition.

It alleges minority representation is impossible with the current system because most of Irving's municipal and school district voters are whites who vote in a bloc.

"This is the body that is most directly involved in municipal affairs across the board," said attorney Bill Brewer. "You would have an enriched community if you had different points of view at the table debating matters of municipal policy and municipal affairs."

The suit was filed on behalf of Manuel Benavidez, an Irving resident who has twice run unsuccessfully for Irving's school board.

City attorney Charles Anderson said late Tuesday that he had not seen a copy of the lawsuit, so he couldn't comment on it.

But Mayor Herbert Gears defended the city's voting system, saying electing council members at-large makes them accountable to all of the city's residents. Single-member districts instead give too much power to individual officials, Gears said.

Irving City Hall has been the site of protests recently over the police's participation in a federal program that identifies illegal immigrants at jails. Some 1,600 people taken to the city jail from September 2006 through September 2007 have had a detainer placed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The detainer calls for the person to be released into ICE custody for possible deportation once the local sentence is completed.

Latino advocates accuse police officers of racial profiling Hispanics and overzealously arresting suspected illegal immigrants so they can be deported, a claim the Mexican Consulate takes so seriously it's advised people to avoid driving through Irving.

The lawsuit against Irving and its city council is similar to a 1988 suit that changed the system in Dallas from at-large city elections to single-member districts.

It was filed by the same firm that has fought to keep the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch from implementing a voter-endorsed law to ban apartments rentals to most illegal immigrants.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5279919.html