The New York State Supreme Court in Orange County overturned the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act, a law Democrats were leveraging to take control of local governments and further a pro-illegal-immigration agenda.
The legislation, which was signed into law in 2022, would in part force municipalities to obtain pre-clearance before making changes to how they conduct their voting systems. According to Spectrum News 1, “local governments or school districts with a record of discrimination in New York” were subject to the new pre-clearance rules.
But the legislation was also being used by some to sue towns for how they currently conduct their elections.
The town of Newburgh uses an “at-large” voting system, which means all voters can vote for all the members of the town board, rather than each seat being chosen by voters of a select district. But six black and Hispanic residents sued the town and the town board in January, arguing that the current system inhibits their ability to elect a candidate of their choice. According to the ruling, the complaint claimed that as of 2020, Newburgh had a population of approximately 60 percent white, 15 percent black and 25 percent Hispanic.
The complaint, according to the ruling, alleges that black and Hispanic voters could be “configured within four or five newly created single-member districts,” but “racially polarized voting” inhibits these voters’ ability to “elect candidates of their choice ‘or’ to influence the outcome of elections is impaired, regardless of proof of racially polarized voting.”
