Courts should not rig elections.
That seems so obvious that it shouldn’t have to be stated. But we need reminding.
Up in little Port Chester, N.Y., some residents complained that no Hispanic had been elected to the local government. Many Hispanics in the town were not citizens, and thus were not entitled to vote. Some Hispanic citizens eligible to vote didn’t. Nevertheless, some people considered it unfair that no Hispanic served in local elected office.
So a federal judge ruled that each voter in Port Chester could cast a vote for each of six candidates in local elections, or six votes for a single candidate, or some combination in between!
It was called “cumulative voting.”
The goal was to allow Hispanic voters to get behind a single candidate and ensure that he would be elected. Other voters presumably would divide up their votes among the non-Hispanic candidates.
Well, sure enough, in the recent elections, a Hispanic candidate was elected — with the judge’s “help.”
We do not fault the winner for benefiting from the court’s bad ruling. But courts ought not to be in the business of guaranteeing particular, predetermined results in what are supposed to be free and fair elections.