
          Voting Rights in Edgefield County
          By Mcdonald, LaughlinLaughlin Mcdonald
          Vol. 6, No. 3, 1984, pp. 13-14
          
          Edgefield is a small, rural county in South_Carolina, lapped along
its western boundary by the stately Savannah River. Local residents
work on farms, pick the peaches that ripen each year in the hard,
often savage, heat of early summer or drive to nearby Aiken and
Augusta for regular city jobs. The principal town and county seat is
also called Edgefield. On most days it appears deserted, except for a
granite monument in the middle of the town square that keeps a mute
but perpetual vigil for the Confederate dead. A handful of stores just
off the square advertise U-Need-A-Biscuits, dry goods and second-hand
shoes. The trade, however, is indifferent.
          Across the way stands the historic old courthouse, the shutters
drawn tightly against its graceful floor-to-ceiling-length
windows. Upstairs in the quiet and musty chamber of the main
courtroom, faded photographs and oil paintings of Edgefield's most
famous native sons hang from the walls in solemn and numerous
procession--Thomas Hugh Wardlaw, the author of South_Carolina's
Articles of Secession, Preston Smith Brooks, the Congressman who
knocked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner insensible to the floor
of the Senate with a gutta percha cane for making an anti-slavery
speech and unfavorable comments about a favorite uncle, General Martin
Witherspoon Gary, the famed "Bald Eagle of the Confederacy,"
B. R. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman, a reconstruction era terrorist who
later led the movement for "legal" disfranchisement of South_Carolina
blacks, ten governors, any number of congressmen and judges, and
Senator Strom Thurmond, who, during most of his political career, was
foremost in the fight for white_supremacy and against effective civil
right laws.
          Edgefield County, taking a chapter out of its rich Confederate
past, recently returned to confrontation and open racial controversy
when it refused to comply with the Voting_Rights_Act of 1965 by
submitting for preclearance its 1966 law adopting at-large
elections. Jurisdictions such as Edgefield which have long, aggravated
histories of discrimination in voting are required by Section_5 of the
Act to preclear any new election practice, either by submitting it to
the Department of Justice or by bringing a law suit in the federal
courts for the District of Columbia and proving that the practice does
not have a discriminatory purpose or effect. Edgefield refused to do
either, despite the fact that the attorney General notified local
officials that the county's at-large elections were unenforceable.
          Prior to 1966, Edgefield's county government was appointed by the
Governor upon the recommendation of the local legislative
delegation. This system of appointed government had been established
throughout the state by Tillman when he was Governor in 1894 as a way
of insuring that blacks could not elect locally their own
representatives. The appointed system worked just as Tillman
envisioned it would--no black ever served on Edgefield's county
government. The appointed system was changed in 1966, however, in part
because of reapportionment and the likelihood that Edgefield would
lose resident members of its legislative delegation by being paired
with a more populous neighboring county.
          The new form of government established for Edgefield in 1966 was a
three member council elected at-large. Although the new procedures
were clearly covered by Section_5, the county made no effort to comply
with the Voting_Rights_Act. Blacks subsequently ran for the county
council on numerous occasions, but because a majority of Edgefield's
voters are white, and because voting is strictly 

along racial lines,
no black was ever able to win a council seat. Indeed, no black in this
century has ever won a contested at-large election in Edgefield.
          In 1971 Edgefield amended its 1966 law to enlarge the county
council from three to five members. This time it requested the
Attorney_General to approve the voting change. It did not, however,
request preclearance of the earlier 1966 legislation, nor did it
indicate that at-large elections were a post-Voting_Rights_Act
election change nor that an appointed system of local government had
ever been in effect. The Attorney_General, after reviewing the
increase in size of the council, concluded that it did not have a
discriminatory purpose or effect and granted preclearance.
          In December of 1980, blacks in Edgefield learned for the first time
that the county was using at-large elections illegally after a search
of documents by the Department of Justice turned up the fact that the
1966 Act had never been submitted for review, and after the Attorney
General wrote local officials a formal "please submit" letter. When
the county refused to make a submission, a group of local blacks
brought suit asking that the federal district court enjoin any further
use of at-large voting until the county complied with the Voting
Rights Act.
          The district court dismissed the Edgefield County blacks'
complaint, concluding that the Attorney_General--despite his
assertions to the contrary,--had in fact precleared the 1966 Act, and,
moreover, that the legal effect of -preclearing the 1971 increase in
size amendment was to preclear the underlying 1966 Act adopting
at-large elections. On February 21, 1984 a unanimous U.S. Supreme
Court disagreed and reversed. McCain v. Lybrand, 104
S. Ct. 1037 (1984).
          The Court held that the Attorney_General had not considered and
precleared at-large elections in Edgefield County when he precleared
the increase in size of the council in 1971, and that there was no
such thing as constructive, or legally implied,
preclearance. According to the Court, the Voting_Rights_Act requires
that covered jurisdictions submit their election law changes to the
Attorney_General "in some unambiguous and recordable manner...with a
request for his consideration pursuant to the Act." Edgefield had done
neither.
          Edgefield has not been alone in failing to comply with the
preclearance requirements of Section_5. From 1965 through 1968,
neither Mississippi, Louisiana nor North_Carolina submitted a single
voting change for Section_5 review. Alabama submitted one in 1965, but
none for the next three years. Georgia made only one submission during
the first three years of the Act, and Virginia made none. Submissions
have increased sharply in recent years (the current rate is
approximately 1,000 submissions a month from all covered
jurisdictions), but surveys by the Department of Justice, the Southern
Regional Council and others reveal that Section_5 jurisdictions are
still using hundreds of uncleared voting practices, such as
Edgefield's at-large elections.
          The Supreme_Court's decision in the Edgefield County case closes a
possible loop hole to the many jurisdictions which continue to violate
Section_5. No longer can they claim that once they precleared any
amendment to an unsubmitted voting practice, the unsubmitted practice
itself was also precleared by implication. A contrary ruling would
have allowed covered jurisdictions to play a kind of shell game with
Section_5 by enacting innocuous amendments to fundamentally
discriminatory voting practices, and contending that preclearance of
the former constituted approval of the latter.
          McCain v. Lybrand may be a break with the
racial and political traditions to places such as Edgefield where
blacks have been excluded from the electorate and where the Voting
Rights Act has been ignored, but it is a positive step in the
direction of enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment and realizing its
promise of equal political participation for all citizens.
          
            Laughlin McDonald is director of the Southern Regional
Office of the American Civil Liberties Union.
          
        
