Judge seeks to expedite lawsuit challenging Mississippi election law

This week, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III set mid- and late July deadlines for state attorneys to respond to a lawsuit challenging a Mississippi election law, saying he’s aware of the “time-sensitive nature” of the lawsuit.

The suit seeks to block the state from enforcing the law, which applies to statewide races, in this year’s elections. Mississippi’s primaries are coming up in August, with general elections in November. Several statewide seats are in the running, including races for governor and attorney general.

The law, which originated with the state’s 1890 constitution, says the winning candidate must win a majority of votes overall, and that he or she must also win in a majority of counties within the state. If no candidate wins both, the decision goes to the Mississippi House of Representatives. Mississippi is the only state to use this election method.

Scales of Justice (photo from wiki commons)

Opponents of the law say that the mechanism dates back to the Jim Crow era of racial discrimination, and that it prevents African Americans from ever being the deciding factor in statewide elections. Mississippi’s demographics back their assertion.

Overall, African Americans make up about 37 percent of the state’s population, with whites making up around 58 percent. The balance, about 5 percent, is a mix of Native Americans, Hispanics and others. It’s by far the highest percentage of African Americans in the nation, but they are concentrated in 25 of the state’s 82 counties. The other 57 counties are majority white and vote majority Republican.

Since the passage of the 1964 Voting Rights Act, African Americans in Mississippi have voted overwhelmingly—about 95 percent—for Democrats. The opposite is true for white voters in the state, who generally vote for Republican candidates today. Democrats running in statewide elections struggle to get more than 10 percent of the state’s white votes.

Four long-time Mississippi voters, who are also African American, sued in May to have the law overturned. The plaintiffs say the law “dilutes votes cast by African American voters” and “denies African Americans an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and elect their preferred candidates.”

“The architects of this system for electing candidates to statewide office had one goal in mind: entrench white control of State government by ensuring that the newly enfranchised African-American citizens… would never have an equal opportunity to translate their numerical strength into political power,” the lawsuit states.

“This discriminatory electoral scheme achieved, and continues to achieve, the framers’ goals by tying the statewide-election process to the power structure of the House. So long as white Mississippians controlled the House, they would also control the elections of statewide officials.”

The four Mississippians filed their suit in affiliation with former Attorney General Eric Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, whose foundation is providing financial and legal support.