Fayette County "district voting"

Commissioners of Fayette are currently elected at large, that is, each is elected by the whole county.

If they were to be elected by a "district," it would then be my understanding that each district's voters would elect someone for their district only. I don't know if he has to live in the district or for how long.
Now if that is the case, the current fight over this latter form of voting is due to the fact that some districts would send only white commissioners to office since they would be primarily white. And then, some districts would send only blacks to office since they would be primarily black.

For purposes of clarity, I have left out other minorities as a majority in any district.

It seems to me that if the whole county is primarily white, then all commissioners would then also be primarily all white, and vice-versa!

The question is, should the majority race in the county elect all of the commissioners (if they please) or not?

Would that make it difficult maybe in an
area where a section was all black---in a predominant white county--to elect a representative?
Or, vice-versa?
Keep in mind race apparently is not a deciding factor anymore for our Presidency!

i think the only people

Submitted by tikigod on Fri, 02/29/2008 - 1:58am.

i think the only people making district voting into a racial issue are those supporting it. what a bunch of racists

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I agree with Mudcat. How scary is that?

Submitted by Jones on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 10:51pm.

I think sageadvice is trying to tenderly tiptoe around his personal bias against people who don't look like him.

The other side of the coin is what Steve Brown said:

We had a roving discussion about district voting a couple of years ago. One of the meetings was in Peachtree City. After the meeting, two women approached me and clearly stated they opposed district voting because they did not want those “black people” taking over our county.

I can only respond to such comments by saying they have a moral dilemma and not a political one. The sheer injustice of saying the shading of a person’s skin is an absolute indicator of how they behave and it should be used to prevent the extension of liberty by prohibiting the vote in a manner closest to the people is an outrage.

In fairness, I am not attributing this position to Rep. Ramsey, but it is used by some of the faux conservatives in Fayette County.

Again, let’s take a truthful approach to the race issue. The entire African-American population in Fayette County is around 12 percent. Logically, how is 12 percent of the population going to override everyone else?

A few weeks ago, voters in a county that is more than 96 percent white chose a black man from Cullman, Ala., James Fields, to represent them in the Alabama state House of Representatives. Last fall, another black man, Eric Powell, was elected to the Mississippi state Senate from a district that is more than 92 percent white. Both men decisively beat white candidates in districts that traditionally support Republican presidential candidates.

As a native Georgian, I have to sigh in disbelief when majority white districts in Alabama and Mississippi show more intellectual integrity on the issues of character and race than some of the faux conservatives living in Fayette County.

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Huh? Does anyone think this is clearly understood?

Submitted by mudcat on Thu, 02/28/2008 - 7:46pm.

sageadvice used the word "clarity"

I don't see any

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