Both sides of the Worcester County redistricting dispute yesterday outlined proposals that they said would give black candidates a better shot at being elected to the county commission.
But a U.S. District Court judge in Baltimore reserved judgment on the conflicting proposals -- a district that cuts through three towns to give blacks a majority or three plans that retain town boundaries while keeping blacks in the minority. Judge Joseph H. Young gave the parties 10 days to submit more information in the case before issuing a ruling.
No black has ever been elected to countywide office in Worcester, where blacks make up about 21 percent of the 35,000 residents.
Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the county in 1992 to challenge an "at-large" system in which residents could vote for candidates from any of five districts.
In April, District Judge Joseph H. Young devised an election plan, but it was struck down this fall by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. The appeals court ordered county officials to develop another system that would give minority candidates a chance to win.
Meanwhile, the scheduled fall election of county commissioners has been put on hold.
County commissioners developed three alternatives, but they have also taken their challenge of "racially gerrymandered" districts to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Districts drawn along racial lines "put people who have nothing in common with each other in the same district" and resegregate the county, said commission President Jeanne Lynch.
The ACLU and NAACP's proposed black-majority district -- whose population is 65 percent black -- is unfair, said commissioner John E. Bloxom. "You're not giving a black candidate an equal opportunity to win; you're giving them a 2-to-1 opportunity to be elected."
He said the districts drawn by Worcester officials -- in which blacks make up 47 percent and 33 percent of the residents -- meet the "minimum" required by the court.
One of the commissioners' plans gives black voters a "functional majority" that counts on 20 percent of white voters to cross over in order to elect a black candidate.
C. Christopher Brown, the attorney representing Worcester's black voters, said the irregular shape of a proposed district connecting blacks in Pocomoke City, Snow Hill and Berlin is necessary. "When you have a Voting Rights violation, if you have to fracture towns [to correct it], you have to fracture towns."
He called the functional majority an "oxymoron" because it still keeps blacks in the minority and relies on an unrealistic voter turnout.
The commissioners have not held public hearings on redistricting proposals.
"I personally fear public input," Ms. Lynch said under questioning from Benjamin E. Griffith, the Mississippi lawyer representing Worcester officials.
She said that the controversy already has polarized residents and that public hearings would have a "chilling effect" on the community. "The whites will not speak up in public because they are afraid of being called racist. Blacks will not speak up in public because they are afraid of being called Uncle Tom blacks," she said.