Federal Judge Finds Voter Discrimination in a Mississippi County

A federal district judge has found that officials in Noxubee County, Mississippi, had discriminated against voters in the county and that the actions had been "racially motivated." According to a Wall Street Journal article posted on opinionjournal.com, the voters who were the victims of the abuses were white voters. The Journal article notes that the abuses found by Judge Tom Lee included illegal marking of absentee ballots, tampering with voting registration rolls, bringing in illegal candidates, and publishing a racially classified list of voters whose votes could be challenged.

The politics in the county are controlled by Ike Brown. He is black and feels that since blacks make up the majority of the county's residents, all county offices should be held by blacks. According to the Journal, whites, while making up 30% of the population, hold only two of the 26 county offices.

An example of the abuses is the issue of absentee ballots. Although people who request them need to have a valid reason for doing so, the Journal reports that more than 20% of the county's votes were cast by means of absentee ballots. One reason for the high percentage of absentee ballots is that Brown would pay people to mark such ballots, often without the voters' knowledge. Any challenges to the absentee ballots of black voters would be rejected by the black poll workers recruited by Brown.

Brown was not shy about who was in charge in the county. The Journal quotes him, "This isn't Mississippi state law you're dealing with. This is Ike Brown's law." When Libby Abrams, a poll watcher, stated that she would have four poll watchers on hand as the votes were counted, Brown allegedly told her, "Fine, fine, have as many as you want. I'll send the police around to arrest you.

The Journal says that Brown "left nothing to chance," including poll workers marking the ballots of black voters without their permission and threatening jail for a candidate who complained about campaign literature being illegally distributed at voting polls.

Sources:

www.opinionjournal.com/diary/
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1859537/posts