Posted on 06/16/2010 6:03:02 AM PDT by animal172
PORT CHESTER, N.Y. – Arthur Furano voted early — five days before Election Day. And he voted often, flipping the lever six times for his favorite candidate. Furano cast multiple votes on the instructions of a federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a new election system crafted to help boost Hispanic representation.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Apparently the minorities could have elected the whole board if they had bothered to vote before. This is just a way for the judge to encourage the lazy ignorant people who who didn't show up to vote in past elections. Thanks Judge!
NO, everyone does not get 6 votes. Only Hispanic residents get 6 votes. White and all others get only 1 vote.
I should have posted an explanation following the title of the article.
Who is this demented judge????? Isn’t anyone able to take this decision to court (a higher court)? This is insanity. LIBs are INSANE.
“NO, everyone does not get 6 votes. Only Hispanic residents get 6 votes. White and all others get only 1 vote.”
That’s not in the article, and I very much doubt it is true.
This is not fair. Furano should have one vote. Now if they really wanted to fix the problem, the other alternative is to give the conservative white voters only a 1/6 of a vote. One vote for the Hispanics, 1/6 of a vote for the whites. There.
The bigger issue is how, with the stroke of a pen, the judge gets to change voting laws. Can you imagine if this starts to happen all over?
It seems that everyone gets six votes, just like they did in the past, since there are six seats to fill at large.
The only difference is that now each voter can cast all six of their votes for a single candidate if they want to.
It’s nothing to get alarmed about.
Tell that to Gregg Gregory in the article, unless he is a crypto-Hispanic. He claims he gave all six of his votes to one candidate.
There are many ways to handle multiple seats in a city.
1. Wards or districts - each voter votes for one and only one seat. This is how the US House of Representatives is handled.
2. Seats representing the whole city, but each seat is a separate vote. An example is the US Senate - you vote for two Senators but their seats are staggered by time. In Ohio, many of the elected judges are done this way with a January 2nd seat, a January 3rd seat etc. so their is no confusion about which seat is which but they all have about the same term.
3. At-large with only one vote per candidate. Many city councils are voted on this way. Pick six from a list of twenty, and the top six vote getters are put on the council.
4. This method of cumulative voting. You have six votes for six seats, but can use multiple votes on a single candidate if you really want him to win (or just hate everyone else).
The judge picked this method (I hate legislating from the bench) to get more Hispanics by allowing the Hispanics to concentrate their votes on a few candidates, but they don't get more votes.
There are six seats open, so normally, you get to cast six votes. The difference with this method is that, while normally you can only vote for a single candidate once, now you can concentrate all six of your votes on one candidate. The article says nothing about only hispanics getting six votes, and in the extremely unlikely case that that was the judge's intent, it would be ruled unconstitutional by an appeals court faster than the ink dried.
I don't agree with it. Modifying voting techniques based on some misguided notion of social justice is stupid, but as I mentioned before, the voting technique itself is not unprecedented. Reading the comments here, some people have a tendency to be WAY too reactionary.
Ethnic Cleansing block by block.
The only way for this to be fair would the be to grant each elected official on the council 6 votes on every issue that comes before them.
One man one vote is the only way. One man 6 votes is CRIMINAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, each time with a differently spelled or worded title. Most of us don't have the time to research a previous post that extensively. And most of us don't care. This is the first I've read it and I thank the poster.
The votes are supposed to reflect the wishes of the community, not just one nationality or minority.
I’m of English descent, and I want six votes because I am a minority.
What insanity....
It doesn’t change the idea of one man one vote; every person now gets 6 votes to do with what they want. The only thing I would add is that with a voting population or 50 per cent whites and 50 per cent hispanics, it seems to me that a lot of hispanics were voting for white candidates as well...especially if the board members were being elected in an “at large fashion”.
OK, now I understand. I got the wrong impression.
It appears the article is poorly written, leading to my and other’s confusion.
Sorry for not fully understanding this to begin with.
I stand corrected, you are right.
Furano cast multiple votes on the instructions of a federal judge and the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a new election system crafted to help boost Hispanic representation.
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