Voting Rights Roundup: Whites might secede from Utah county after Navajo majority finally wins power
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Voting Rights Roundup: Whites might secede from Utah county after Navajo majority finally wins power
Utah: Harkening back to the tactics of white-flight segregationists, a Utah state representative has proposed that a heavily white region within Navajo-majority San Juan County secede and form its own county after Navajo-backed candidates for county offices won historic majorities in 2018's elections . That election outcome was the byproduct of a successful lawsuit that struck down the racially gerrymandered districts for county commission and school board that had enabled candidates backed by the white minority to maintain a stranglehold on local government for decades.
The proponent of this plan, state Rep. Phil Lyman, isn't just a Republican legislator. He was also a San Juan County commissioner who chose to run for the state legislature in 2018 after his illegally gerrymandered district was struck down. Lyman claims he's not necessarily in favor of secession and merely thinks it should be debated, but he's consistently (and baselessly) rejected the court's ruling striking down the districts as illegitimate.
Normally, splitting an existing county would require supporters to gather signatures from one-quarter of residents in each portion of the proposed division. Voters in both sections of the proposed split would also have to approve the plan in a referendum. However, GOP state Rep. Kim Coleman has introduced a bill to drop the requirement that voters in both sections of the proposed division favor a plan to split the county. If these proposals become law, it could pave the way for white voters like those in San Juan to simply secede and take their tax base with them now that they've lost majority control in fair elections to candidates backed by a community of color.
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Nice , plain , example of open racism.
I think that the new Navajo majority should just deport them.
Gonna take my ball and go home!
I don't care about the ethnicity of people in government, but if others do, they're free to leave. I don't think I'd go splitting up the county for them, though. Let them find their own place where they can be happy.
I feel the same way about the state of jefferson.
The way I read this, they tried to rig the system with gerrymandering and when that failed, get pissed off and try to make ones own rules.