Vollin v. Kimbel
| Decision Date | 04 August 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 74-2277,74-2277 |
| Citation | 519 F.2d 790 |
| Parties | George VOLLIN, Jr., and Harrison Douglas, Appellants, v. Ralph KIMBEL et al., Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Sherman W. Pratt, Arlington, Va., for appellants.
Jerry K. Emrich, County Atty. for Arlington County, Va., for appellees.
Before WINTER, BUTZNER and WIDENER, Circuit Judges.
The appealing plaintiffs are black residents of Arlington County who attack the at-large system by which the five-member county governing board is elected. The at-large system of election was adopted in 1930 and supplanted a system of election from single-member districts. Plaintiffs assert that the area of Arlington County in which they live is geographically distinct from the rest of the county and in it is concentrated the bulk of the county's black and lower income citizens. Plaintiffs contend that the at-large voting system unconstitutionally dilutes the voting power of the citizens of their area. The district court dismissed the case at the conclusion of plaintiffs' evidence, finding that there were no formal barriers to participation in county elections and that the at-large system had no "actual impact" on the plaintiffs' voting power. We affirm.
Plaintiffs failed to make a case because they failed to show any formal disability, any practical impact on their voting power, or any effective intent to discriminate embodied in the scheme. See Holt v. Richmond, 459 F.2d 1093 (4 Cir.), cert. denied, 408 U.S. 931, 92 S.Ct. 2510, 33 L.Ed.2d 343 (1972). Their case, therefore, rests on two untenable assertions. One is that multi-member electoral units are per se unconstitutional. The second is that blacks are entitled to have a representative on the five-man county board although blacks comprise only 5.8 percent of the voters. *
Both contentions are answered by the recent per curiam opinion of the Supreme Court in Dallas County v. Reese, --- U.S. ---, 95 S.Ct. 1706, 44 L.Ed.2d 312 (1975), reversing Reese v. Dallas County, 505 F.2d 879 (5 Cir. 1974) (in banc). The election system for the Dallas County Commission provided for at-large balloting for all four members but required that one of the four commissioners be elected from each of the county's four residency districts. The residency districts varied widely in population; and the plaintiffs alleged that the residency requirement unconstitutionally diluted the votes of the residents of the City of Selma district, because only one member of the commission could be elected from this district although it contained about one-half of the county's population. The Supreme Court not only upheld the at-large election of Commission members, it also rejected the attack as based on assumptions rather than proof of actual dilution of voting power:
We think it clear, however, that Dusch (Dusch v. Davis, 387 U.S. 112, 87 S.Ct. 1554, 18 L.Ed.2d 656 (1967)) contemplated that a successful...
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Terrazas v. Clements
...the absence of a discriminatory result, there must be some doubt whether a showing of intent could even suffice. See Vollin v. Kimbel, 519 F.2d 790, 790 (4th Cir. 1975) (dilution requires "effective" intent to discriminate). Nevertheless, we will explicitly make findings on intent. The reco......
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Lytle v. Commissioners of Election of Union County, 75-1327
...dilute the voting strength of an identifiable element of the voting population." Id. at 480, 95 S.Ct. at 1708. See also, Vollin v. Kimbel, 519 F.2d 790 (4th Cir. 1975). III. In Bradley v. Richmond School Board, 416 U.S. 696, 94 S.Ct. 2006, 40 L.Ed.2d 476 (1974), the Supreme Court held that ......