U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten said he will rule Friday or Monday on whether Fayette County should use district or at-large elections to fill the county commission seat left vacant by the recent death of Pota Coston.
The NAACP went to court to stop the county from using its old system of at-large or countywide voting for the Sept. 15 special-election to fill the seat. Candidates begin qualifying for the District 5 seat Aug. 10.
Coston, the first black person elected in Fayette to a county-level post, died July 3 of cancer. She was elected in November under the first election held with court-ordered district voting.
After Coston’s death, county officials said they had no choice but to revert to at-large voting to fill her seat. District voting is in limbo right now as the county and NAACP await an appeals court ruling that calls for a new trial. A federal appeals court ruled that Batten needed to retry the case because his original decision was based on pre trial court filings rather than after an actual bench trial.
No trial date has been set yet.
Leah Aden, attorney representing the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund told Batten his 2013 decision installing the district eleciton system “was effective in allowing black voters’ votes to count.”
Anne Lewis, representing the county commission and board of election, told the judge the 2012 countywide election map was the one that must be used to replace Coston. “It’s the last legally enforceable map,” she said.
Thursday’s court appearance for the NAACP’s preliminary injunction is the latest chapter in a four-year-old legal battle by a group of black Fayette residents - with the help of the civil rights organization - to get what they say is a more equitable voting system in the predominately white county.
To date, both sides have spent about $1 million each fighting the case.
Fayette officials appealed the district voting ruling because they say the county’s black population isn’t large enough nor geographically compact enough to create a district of predominately minority voters and any attempts to artificially create such a district is discriminatory. The county also contends that, based on past election results, Fayette voters vote along political lines rather than racial lines, which means the NAACP’s claim fails to show that voting is based on race.
Judge will rule by Monday on plan to fill vacant Fayette seat
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