Economy
How Columbus's Majority-Black City Council Might be Violating the Voting Rights Act
A group of residents is out to prove that the Ohio city’s voting methods are racially discriminatory, despite the current makeup of its representatives.
The majority of Columbus, Ohio’s, city council members are African Americans. But the city’s method for electing city council members is racially discriminatory, or at least this is what Jonathan Beard, a developer in Columbus’s poorest neighborhoods, is trying to prove. And the nation’s oldest and most respected civil rights organization thinks that he may have a point.
On November 17, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. [LDF] wrote a letter to Columbus’s seven city council members, which includes four African Americans, that reads: