Martin: Weigh primary results

Secretary of state widens split from officials in remapping suit

The results of the May 22 primary should be considered in a lawsuit challenging the boundaries of Senate District 24, Secretary of State Mark Martin said in a court filing Wednesday.

Martin, a Republican, is a defendant in the suit along with Gov. Mike Beebe and Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who are Democrats, but he chose to be represented by his own attorney and has largely sided with the plaintiffs in the case.

The suit, Jeffers v. Beebe, alleges that the boundaries are drawn so that black voters don’t have an adequate chance to elect the candidate they prefer and that the defendants, who make up the state Board of Apportionment, drew the boundaries to intentionally dilute black voter strength.

The panel of three federal judges considering the suit cleared Martin of the intentional-dilution charge during the trial after the three defendants testified that Martin had little input on the final map approved by the board.

The judges have not ruled on whether they will consider new evidence nearly three months after the trial ended May 10.

The lawsuit contends that the boundaries of District 24 violate Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1973 as well as the 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which were ratified after the Civil War to protect blacks’ civil rights.

District 24 includes all of Crittenden County and parts of Cross, Lee, Phillips and St. Francis counties.

The district is one of four in the state in which black voters make up the majority of the population. The districts were created to enhance the influence of black voters. They sought to make up for lower rates of black voting caused, experts said, by institutionalized bias.

Chief U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright and 8th U.S. Circuit of Appeals Judge Lavenski Smith have not issued a final ruling. There is no deadline for them to do so. Smith is a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice.

In the May 22 primary, white challenger Rep. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, defeated incumbent black Sen. Jack Crumbly, D-Widener, with 60.55 percent of the vote.

The plaintiffs’ attorney, James Valley, filed a motion July 27 asking the court to consider the primary results and an analysis of the results done by the plaintiffs’ expert witness, Lisa Handley.

Handley’s analysis shows that 86 percent of voters in predominantly white areas of the district cast their ballots for Ingram, while between 63 percent and 86 percent of voters in predominantly black areas voted for Crumbly, which she says shows Crumbly lost the May election because white and black people voted as a “bloc.”

Martin’s court filing states that the results should be considered, but the court should not consider new testimony or analysis.

“The trial record in this case is sufficient with the addition of the recent election results,” it states.

Martin is represented by attorney Asa Hutchinson, the Republican former congressman who lost to Beebe in the 2006 gubernatorial election.

Beebe and McDaniel, who are represented by the attorney general’s office, argued in their Aug. 2 motion against Valley’s request that the fact that the black candidate lost does not prove that black voters didn’t have the opportunity to elect the candidate they want.

The attorney general’s response also states that considering new analysis at this point would violate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which dictate how and when expert testimony is used.