By a show of three hands against two recently at the Fayette County Board of Education (BOE), my ability to vote for BOE members was shrunk from voting for all five members to just one. By caving in to the demands of the NAACP lawsuit, they adopted district voting which means I can only vote for one BOE member in my district,
I don’t even like the word “disenfranchised,” but now I are one! If you live in Fayette County, so are you.
It doesn’t seem right to me to have 80 percent of my voting power taken away by the very ones I would be voting for or against.
I have been a resident of this county for nearly 25 years, and raised three kids within our school system, which stands head and shoulders above surrounding counties precisely because every one of us has a say in every member of the BOE. At least we did until last week.
I served nearly 25 years in uniform, and my multiple Purple Hearts for wounds in combat should say I have earned my voting rights. Having voted in every election in which I was qualified since 1976, I feel it my personal responsibility to cast my ballot. I don’t take lightly having that right rescinded.
When three individuals remove my right to vote by raising their hand, I am reminded of Reconstruction when local men in South Carolina were not allowed to vote after a bloody Civil War. To the victors go the spoils, and dastardly Republican legislators simply had to punish those returning Confederate soldiers and their supporters.
Now I wonder what will happen at the County Commission, also a party to the NAACP lawsuit, which has all the appearance of using the cover of the Voting Rights Act to advance Democrats to elected office in a conservative county.
Before he ran for County Commission, Steve Brown preached the virtues of district voting, perhaps a product of his ties to NAACP.
His sudden conversion to opposing district voting may somehow have been genuine, but it sure was convenient in his successful bid to be commissioner, especially in a county where the notion of district voting is decidedly unpopular.
Did we bring a Trojan horse into our County Commission? We voters deserve to know now, before the district voting issue comes to a head at the commission, whether Steve Brown will be a true and committed opponent, or will he call it “inevitable” or “too expensive to oppose” and publicly capitulate to what he secretly wants anyway? His vote could decide the issue for all of us.
In the autumn of my life, few things raise my ire, but my ire is hotly raised when I lose my voting privileges by the action of a few, one of them a liberal who now chairs the BOE and who wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance of being elected if we all were able to vote in the way we are accustomed.
No matter what else happens, I hope you cast your future ballot to make very sure those three never serve in office again.
Mr. Brown, Fayette County voters deserve to know where you really stand.
Michael L. King
Peachtree City, Ga.
