In a move that some are saying could provide illegal immigrants with a disproportionate amount of representation in Yakima, Washington, immigrant rights activists are suing the city in an attempt to re-jigger the city’s current voting procedures.
Quietly last week, immigration lawyer Tim Schoenrock filed a law suit against Yakima on behalf of his client, former Democratic Party chairman, Tony Sandoval. The suit alleges that the city has been violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (which prohibits any voting procedure that results in a discriminatory outcome), by allowing for an at-large City Council voting system that they believe discriminates against the Latino population – which votes at a lower rate than their white counterparts.
“The white population votes at a larger percentage than Latinos thereby over ruling every time the Latino group disagrees with the white vote,” explained Schoenrock.
With Latinos comprising 40 percent of the population, the hope is to have more Latino representation on the City Council, a problem critics say would not be an issue if Latinos actually ran for office more often.
To solve the perceived problem, Sandoval and Schoenrock want to see the city divided into seven equal districts, so that citizens will only be able to elect one council representative per district. This likely would be uncontroversial were there not an effort to ensure that illegals are counted in the districting process..................
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