I am not very often moved to write a letter to this newspaper. Having been a resident of the county for the last 25 years I have had ample opportunity to read the articles, editorials and blog posts associated with this publication over many years. I have come to know its “point of view” and that of its predominant readership.
Believing as I do in the adage of a famous author that “it is easier to fool people than it is to convince people they are being fooled”, I have come to believe it would be a waste of my time and energy to express my views on any topic of community concern within the four corners of this publication as I view its writers, commentators, and readership as irretrievably fooled.
That view changed slightly, recently, when in a chance encounter with the publisher of this paper I was challenged to express my views. I want to do so on the recent unfortunate passing of our beloved sister Commissioner Pota Coston and the reported plans of the Fayette County Board of Elections and Board of Commissioners to fill her seat in a county-wide at-large election.
As the only African-American, Democrat, and woman on a board of white Republican men, Commissioner Coston was the manifestation of what representative government is supposed to be. She got there because of a successful Voting Rights lawsuit that we filed in August of 2011. A lawsuit that became necessary because of the systemic exclusion of African Americans from electoral politics in this county due to racially based voting patterns.
What the average citizen of Fayette County does not realize, and understandably so, is that in order to win a federal voting rights case it becomes necessary to prove racial bloc voting patterns exist in the challenged jurisdiction.
This element of a voting rights case is nothing more than a mathematical, or more precisely, a statistical calculation. Once it is calculated, racial bloc voting either exists or does not exist. If it does not exist you lose your voting rights case. It is as simple as that.
The plaintiffs in the Fayette County voting rights case never proved racial bloc voting. They never proved racial bloc voting patterns in Fayette County because the experts that the county hired admitted and conceded that racial bloc voting existed in Fayette County.
Mainly as a result of them conceding this element of their case, the at-large voting provisions of the Fayette County charter were stricken as being in violation of the Voting Rights Act by the federal judge assigned to the case.
Now, after spending close to a million taxpayer dollars fighting a case that they conceded the main issue in, and after Commissioner Coston was elected by district voting, the Fayette County Board of Elections and Board of Commissioners, would spit on her memory by seeking to have her successor elected in an at-large election that the judge assigned to the case has already ruled is an illegal method of election in Fayette County.
What a disgrace to a person who exemplified nothing but grace and charm in her professional and political life.
Wayne B. Kendall
Fayette County resident
[Kendall was one of the attorneys involved in the original 2011 lawsuit.]
