Here?s what the print (dead-tree) version of NR has to say about the bizarre case of Kinston?s nonpartisan elections:
Eric Holder?s Justice Department strikes again. In Kinston, N.C., two-thirds of the 15,000 registered voters are black. Discriminatory barriers to voting are a distant memory: Black registration is higher than the black voting-age population, black public officials are routinely elected, and Barack Obama won the district by a wide margin. In 2008, Kinston also approved ? two-to-one ? a referendum to make city-council elections nonpartisan by omitting candidates? party affiliation from ballots. For a small town where citizens often know their representatives personally, that makes sense. But thanks to the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), voting-rule changes in Kinston and numerous other districts must still be approved by the Justice Department. The partisans in Holder?s Civil Rights Division rejected the people?s will on the astounding theory that voters had a right to be represented by Democrats and, without the party label, could not be trusted to make their own decisions about which candidates to support. The point of the VRA was to protect voters in a time of systematic discrimination. Under Holder, the point is to protect the Democratic party.
