A Black man who says he was elected mayor of a rural Alabama town but has been kept from taking office by White leaders of the town has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.
A Black man who says he was elected mayor of a rural Alabama town but has been kept from taking office by White leaders of the town has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.
They did have a proper election. There was only one candidate, so he won. Then they had a second, improper election where only the previous council was allowed to qualify for office or vote.
Legally yes, but part of the article makes it sound like there was a regular election between two candidates with everything you expect and the winner is being denied. That’s not the case and we don’t know how the citizens actually feel about this. It did, after all, take decades for someone to do this.
Not that any of this should have ever happened in the first place, they should have just run the elections normally.
There are a large number of local elections decided because only one person applied for the job and they don’t have any issues like this.
Yes, but in this case a different (much dumber) system had been established for decades without objection it seems. That’s different than just having regular, official elections with just one candidate, which is what they should have done in the first place. We don’t know who would have won if it was a normal, two-candidate election.
This going to court is a good thing because a) anyone could have filed the paperwork and won by default, including someone who would abuse the position and be really terrible for the town and b) this is certainly the end of the unofficial-official system they’ve had and might bring bad stuff to light. But keep in mind that the article’s coming on very strong because they mostly cite the prosecution.