Sides wrap up in Arkansas judicial vote districting case

Federal judge awaits filings, sets no time line for ruling


              FILE - In this July 22, 2014 file photo, A "Vote Here" sign is seen outside the main entrance to the Fleming Park Bernie Ward Community Center during a run-off election day in Augusta, Georgia. (AP Photo/The Savannah Morning News, Sara Caldwell)
FILE - In this July 22, 2014 file photo, A "Vote Here" sign is seen outside the main entrance to the Fleming Park Bernie Ward Community Center during a run-off election day in Augusta, Georgia. (AP Photo/The Savannah Morning News, Sara Caldwell)

After six days of testimony from judges, elected officials, voters, a redistricting expert and competing elections experts, the decision of whether to significantly change how Arkansas elects judges to its highest courts rests with U.S. District Judge James M. Moody.

Both sides in the lawsuit that seeks to force the creation of a single majority-minority district for electing justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and two majority-minority districts for electing state Court of Appeals judges concluded their trial arguments Monday.

Moody said he will rule after attorneys from both sides file post-trial briefs. He did not propose a time line on when such a ruling may be forthcoming.

The lawsuit seeks to force the creation of a single majority-minority district for electing justices of the Arkansas Supreme Court and two majority-minority districts for electing state Court of Appeals judges.

The suit was brought by the Christian Ministerial Alliance, Arkansas Community Institute, former Pulaski County Circuit Judge Marion Humphrey Sr. and Kymara Seals of Jefferson County.

In the newly formed districts proposed in the lawsuit, the majority of voters would be Black.

The suit says the change is needed because the state's current method of electing judges to the state's two highest courts dilutes the voting strength of Black voters, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Currently, the seven Supreme Court justices are elected statewide to eight-year terms and the 12 Court of Appeals judges are elected from seven districts, five of which elect two members.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund as well as private attorneys from New York, Washington D.C. and Little Rock.

Defendants in the lawsuit are Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Secretary of State John Thurston and Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. They comprise the state Board of Apportionment. The defendants are represented by attorneys from Rutledge's office.

The plaintiffs rested Friday after a week of witnesses who included a former judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, a current appeals court judge, a state senator and others.

Attorneys for the defendants put on only one witness Monday. That witness -- John Alford, a political science professor with Rice University -- testified that voting in Arkansas is more polarized along party lines than racial or ethnic lines. Alford said in partisan elections, Black voters tend to vote for Democratic candidates while white voters tend more often to vote Republican.

In judicial races, which are nonpartisan, Alford said his calculations indicated that Black support was often evenly split between candidates regardless of race.

Alford's testimony was in direct contrast to the testimony last week of Baodong Liu, a professor of political science and ethnic studies with the University of Utah. Liu concluded that voting in Arkansas is polarized along racial lines and that white voters in Arkansas tend to vote as a bloc in defeating candidates preferred by Black voters.

Liu testified that his studies of Arkansas elections over the past 20 years indicated that in all but two at-large elections the candidates preferred by Black voters lost. At-large elections are those voted on by voters from the entire state.

Two main differences between Alford's and Liu's methodologies in analyzing Arkansas voting patterns were the political contests the two men analyzed.

Alford's analysis included both uniracial (elections in which all candidates were of the same racial group) and racially contested elections (contests in which candidates were of different racial groups). Meanwhile, Liu said uniracial elections were of little probative value in determining the preferred candidate of minority voters and were not included in his analysis.

In summing up the case for the defense, Dylan Jacobs, an attorney in the state attorney general's office, argued that the relief sought by the plaintiffs is "unprecedented."

Jacobs said at-large Supreme Court districts are common among states that elect high court justices and that no state has ever been required to shift from at-large to single-member district elections in those races.

"Black voters in Arkansas have the same opportunities to elect candidates of their choice as white voters," Jacobs said. "No federal court has ever ordered the relief the plaintiffs are asking in regard to the Supreme Court."

He said of the four judicial races selected by Liu to examine, three were state Supreme Court races in which Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen was a candidate. Although, according to Liu's study, Griffen's support among Black voters ranged from 61.8% to 84.7% across the three elections, Jacobs said the lack of white voter support for Griffen's candidacy had more to do with Griffen than with race.

Calling Griffen "not the best example" to draw from, Jacobs said, "At best, the plaintiffs have proven that Arkansas voters are polarized against Judge Griffen."

In contrast, Victoria Wenger, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, argued that election officials in Arkansas have long known that Black majority districts were needed to level the playing field between racial interests in the state and to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

"Tim Humphries said, in his own words, 'The commissioners knew that Black voting representation was sorely lacking in the state's history and had an opportunity to do something about that.' So why didn't they?" Wenger said. "Again, we heard part of the answer from Tim Humphries, in his own words, 'The fear of challenges from disgruntled white voters.' It was deference to their concerns over the needs of Black voters."

Humphries, an attorney from Judsonia, is a former staff attorney for the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners.

Wenger said maps prepared by William Cooper, a private mapping consultant from Virginia, showed that Black majority districts could be carved out without disrupting traditional mapping priorities, such as keeping intact communities of interest and ensuring splits between precincts and other jurisdictional lines are kept to a minimum.

Wenger concluded by saying that maintaining the status quo "is not a sufficient reason for vote dilution."


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