TABLE OF CONTENTS |
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I. | Preliminary Facts and Legal Background | 1391 |
A. | Procedural History | 1391 | |
B. | Factual Background | 1391 |
1. | The Supreme Court of the State of Mississippi | 1391 |
a. | Nature, Functions and Duties | 1391 | |||
b. | Supreme Court Elections | 1392 | |||
c. | Population Within the Three Supreme Court Districts | 1393 | |||
d. | Black Supreme Court Justices | 1393 |
C. | Legal Background | 1393 |
1. | Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 | 1393 | ||
2. | Application of Section 2 to Judicial Elections | 1394 | ||
3. | Standard for Proving a Section 2 Violation | 1395 |
a. | Thornburg Tripartite Test | 1396 |
(1) | Sufficiently Large and Geographically Compact Minority Group Population | 1396 | ||||
(2) | Political Cohesion in the Minority Group Population | 1398 | ||||
(3) | Bloc Voting in the White Majority Population | 1399 |
b. | Totality of the Circumstances | 1400 |
II. | Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law | 1401 |
A. | At-large, Multimember District Challenge | 1401 |
1. | District Two: The Southern District | 1401 |
a. | Thornburg Tripartite Test | 1402 |
(1) | Sufficiently Large and Geographically Compact Black Population | 1402 |
2. | District Three: The Northern District | 1402 |
a. | Thornburg Tripartite Test | 1402 |
(1) | Sufficiently Large and Geographically Compact Black Population | 1402 |
3. | District One: The Central District | 1403 |
a. | Thornburg Tripartite Test | 1403 |
(1) | Sufficiently Large and Geographically Compact Black Population | 1403 | ||||
(2) | Political Cohesion in the Black Population | 1404 | ||||
(3) | Bloc Voting in the White Majority Population | 1405 |
b. | Totality of the Circumstances | 1407 |
(1) | History of Official Discrimination | 1408 | ||||
(2) | Racially Polarized Voting | 1408 | ||||
(3) | Unusually Large Districts, Majority Vote Requirements, Anti–Single–Shot Provisions, or Other Discriminatory Voting Practices or Procedures | 1408 | ||||
(4) | Candidate Slating Process | 1409 | ||||
(5) | Socioeconomic Effects of Discrimination | 1409 |
(6) | Racial Appeals in Political Campaigns | 1409 | ||||
(7) | Minority Electoral Success | 1410 | ||||
(8) | Lack of Responsiveness to the Particularized Needs of Blacks | 1410 | ||||
(9) | Tenuousness of State Policies Underlying Multimember, At–Large Districts | 1410 |
B. | District Line Challenge | 1412 |
1. | Three North–South Districts Without Splitting Counties | 1414 |
a. | Thornburg Tripartite Test | 1415 |
(1) | Sufficiently Large and Geographically Compac t Black Population | 1415 |
2. | Subdistricts Within the Proposed North–South Districts | 1415 |
a. | Thornburg Tripartite Test | 1415 |
(1) | Sufficiently Large and Geographically Compac t Black Population | 1415 | ||||
(2) | Political Cohesion in the Black Population | 1416 | ||||
(3) | Bloc Voting in the White Majority Population | 1416 |
b. | Totality of the Circumstances | 1416 |
(1) | Tenuousness of State Policies Underlying Existing Supreme Court Lines | 1417 |
III. | Conclusion | 1418 |
No personal [sic] shall be eligible to the office of judge of the Supreme Court *1392 who shall not have attained the age of thirty years at the time of his appointment, and who shall not have been a practicing attorney and a citizen of the state for five years immediately preceding such appointment.
The legislature shall divide the state into three Supreme Court districts, and there shall be elected one judge for and from each district by the qualified electors thereof at a time and in the manner provided by law.5
The Supreme Court shall consist of nine judges.... The additional judges herein provided for shall be selected one for and from each of the supreme court districts in the manner provided for by Section 145A of this Constitution or any amendment thereto.
TABLE 1 |
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DISTRICT | Total Pop. | Black Pop. | Black Pop. % | Total *VAP | Black *VAP | Black *VAP % |
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District 3 (Northern) | 815,365 | 264,978 | 32.50% | 583,931 | 166,367 | 28.49% |
District 1 (Central) | 887,966 | 414,478 | 46.68% | 623,064 | 263,205 | 42.24% |
District 2 (Southern) | 869,885 | 235,601 | 27.08% | 619,462 | 148,097 | 23.91% |
(*—Voting Age Population) |
No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, or practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.
“[t]he need for voting age population data ... should be obvious. Only voting age persons can vote. It would be a Pyrrhic victory for a court to create a single-member district in which a minority population dominant in absolute, but not in voting age numbers, continued to be defeated at the polls.”
[i]f the minority group is not politically cohesive, it cannot be said that the selection of a multimember electoral structure thwarts distinctive minority group interests.
unless minority group members experience substantial difficulty electing representatives of their choice, they cannot prove that a challenged electoral mechanism impairs their ability “to elect.” § 2(b). And, where the contested electoral structure is a multimember district, ... in the absence of significant white bloc voting it cannot be said that the ability of minority voters to elect their chosen representatives is inferior to that of white voters.
[r]esults of the ecological regression analyses show a pattern of severe racial polarization in elections held in the State of Mississippi. Analyses results show that black voters are a highly cohesive electorate who invariably support black candidates by substantial majorities.
white voters strongly unite behind white candidates, generally providing very little crossover votes for black candidates. This very strong bloc voting by whites would pose a formidable obstacle to *1406 black candidates seeking office in districts with a white voting age majority.
the success of a minority candidate in a particular election does not necessarily prove that the district did not experience racially polarized voting in that election; special circumstances, such as ... incumbency ... may explain minority success in a polarized contest.
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