Voting pattern

Why avoid these elections?

NOW THEY’VE done it. The Little Rock School Board has baited voters into a lawsuit. We suppose that’s what lawyers are for. And the board has been sued before. These things happen, especially in the United and Litigious States of America.

Not for nothing, but the people who filed the lawsuit have a point. And maybe even the law on their side. (Somebody better suited than us, somebody with a black robe, will make that decision.)

Some background: Little Rock’s school board revised the school zone boundary lines late last year to equalize the populations in the zones after the Census. Then the board followed with a 7-2 vote to only have two zone elections this November, instead of all of them. The others will follow in the years to come, as was agreed to before the Census.

Hmm.

That means that some people are living in school district zones that never had the opportunity to vote for (or against) those representing them. As we said at the time of that 7-2 vote, when somebody you didn’t vote for wins an election, well, that’s democracy for ya. But when you’re moved into another district by those making district lines, and you don’t get a say about who represents you for (possibly) years … . Voters might consider that to be poor form.

According to Cynthia Howell’s story in Tuesday’s paper, the Arkansas School Boards Association had initially advised that all seats on a school board be opened for election when zone lines are altered. But attorneys for the Little Rock district argued that all nine seats on the board were not legally required to hold elections.

Lawyers for the district assure, without being reassuring, that what the board did was legal. We shall see. We think it’s a mistake, legal or not.

What if a judge does rule that the board’s actions were technically legal? Thousands of voters in Little Rock were moved to different school board zones and had no say in the matter. Wouldn’t it be better, simply from a public relations point of view, to hold all nine elections now?

We don’t know what the board is afraid of. There seems to be a lot of good will for the new board right now, after all those years of state control. Besides, there is plenty of time. The candidate filing period for the November election for these races is early August.

Legally defensible is one thing. Politically defensible—as you’re looking into the face of an interested local voter— might be quite another.