Court strikes down at-large voting in Fayette county | Online Athens

FAYETTEVILLE — A federal court struck down Fayette County’s at-large method of electing members to certain county offices, saying in an opinion released Tuesday that the method was a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

A U.S. District Court judge ruled on a lawsuit that was filed in 2011 and ordered the county to establish an alternative to the at-large election method.

With Fayette County being about 70 percent white and 20 percent African-American, according to Census statistics from 2011, officials from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund officials said the at-large method virtually guaranteed that African-American candidates would never be elected to the County Board of Commissioners of the County Board of Education. Regardless of their qualifications, African-American candidates could not get the support of white voters in the county, Legal Defense Fund officials said in a release.

The court ordered officials to present alternative voting methods on before June 25. The method may be a district-based voting method, which Legal Defense Fund officials say is likely to give the county’s African-American residents better representation.

via Court strikes down at-large voting in Fayette county | Online Athens.