Trying to Make History, With 6 Votes Per Person
PORT CHESTER, N.Y. - There is little in this Westchester County village to suggest that one of the most important elections in its history is under way. Demure campaign signs punctuate lawns here and there. Even more rarely, residents may run across a candidate shaking hands at the mall.
Life appears to be going on as normal, which is to say: quietly, with simmering ethnic tension.
But some people - including federal officials, civil rights scholars and the village's political leadership - are paying careful attention. The balloting, which began with early voting on Tuesday and ends this coming Tuesday, inaugurates a new electoral system that is meant to give Port Chester's large Latino population a better chance of electing one of its own to the village's Board of Trustees.
No one is sure whether the complicated new process, which emerged from a bitter and expensive legal battle, will have the desired effect - or plunge the community into a new round of litigation. Most candidates and political leaders are hoping for the best.
"This is really historic," said the mayor, Dennis Pilla. "It was a struggle to bring the village this far. I think it's a very proud moment for us all."
Latinos made up 46 percent of the village's roughly 28,000 people in the most recent census, in 2000, though many were not American citizens. About 43 percent of residents were non-Hispanic whites and 7 percent were blacks, according to the census. No Latino has ever been elected to the six-member village board, and the preferred candidates among Latino voters have usually been defeated.
The odds against winning have been so daunting, Latino advocates say, that only two Hispanic candidates have ever been on the ballot, most recently Cesar Ruiz, who won nearly the entire Latino vote in 2001 but still lost the election. In 2006, the Justice Department sued the village under the Voting Rights Act, saying its system of electing six at-large board members denied the Latino population fair representation. A federal court judge agreed and ordered Port Chester to come up with a more equitable process.
The Justice Department pushed for voting districts that would each elect its own member, giving more power to Latino voters, who predominate in a few neighborhoods. But the judge approved the village's proposal: a rarely used process known as cumulative voting, in which each voter has six votes to cast any way he likes - say, one vote each for six candidates or six votes for only one candidate.
This week's election is the first in which cumulative voting has been used in New York State since at least the beginning of the 20th century, according to Fair Vote, a voting-rights advocacy group.
Two Latino candidates, both immigrants, have qualified to be on the ballot, one a Democrat and the other a Republican. A third, who was disqualified because of a filing error, is campaigning as an independent write-in candidate. A total of 13 candidates are running.
Over the past several months, as part of a consent decree in the court case, the village has held seminars and conducted mass mailings in Spanish and English to educate voters on the new system.
In spite of the effort and cost - the village has spent more than $1 million on legal bills, and estimated it may spend an additional $300,000 to carry out the new process - there is no guarantee that a Latino will be elected.
Historically, Hispanic residents, many of whom feel marginalized by the village's power structure, have registered and turned out to vote at lower rates than non-Hispanic whites. And some experts say that voters who mistrust the new system and the idea of Latino trustees may mobilize against the Hispanic candidates.
Even those Latino candidates do not appear terribly optimistic about their prospects.
"What can I tell you? I'm working hard to get elected," said the Democrat, Luis Marino, 43, a volunteer firefighter in Port Chester who works in the maintenance department of the Scarsdale school system. "If I don't get in, I'm not going to get upset or anything like that. If I win, excellent."
Mr. Marino, who was born in Peru, has not helped his chances by eschewing time-honored campaigning techniques like ringing doorbells and walking the neighborhoods to chat with voters.
"I don't do much walking door to door because I don't believe in that," he said. "I don't like to harass people or aggravate people." His preferred campaign method? "I just call all my friends and ask them if they'll vote for me."
His Republican opponent, Fabiola Montoya, 56, who emigrated from Colombia in 1981 and teaches citizenship classes, also said she would rely mostly on telephone calls and her network of friends to get out the vote.
"I think it's good," Ms. Montoya said of her campaign's progress. "If I don't go through, I'm going to try again."
The only candidate who has been hustling for votes in Port Chester's Latino neighborhoods in recent days is the one not on the ballot: John Palma, an Ecuadorean immigrant.
Mr. Palma, 42, was thrown off the ballot because of what he calls "a technicality." He submitted his nominating paperwork several days before the designated filing period. The village clerk's office stamped his submission, he said, then handed it back to him and told him to refile during the legal period. After he refiled, an opponent noticed the two date stamps and challenged the legality of the paperwork. The county's Board of Elections ruled against Mr. Palma. The task he has set for himself is formidable: persuading people not only to vote, but also to take the time to write his name on the ballot - up to six times, if possible.
"It's kind of an uphill battle, I guess," said Mr. Palma, who moved to the United States when he was 3 and is an accountant. "Let's roll the dice and see what happens."
Last Saturday, under an unforgiving sun, Mr. Palma, dressed in cargo shorts and sneakers, trudged from door to door through a working-class Latino neighborhood. The first eight doorbells he rang drew no response. "Zero for eight," he said with a self-effacing laugh.
Mr. Palma said he thought it would be difficult for a Latino to win this time. Latinos have felt excluded or discriminated against for so long, he said, that they do not believe that one election will make any difference.
"They tell you they're not interested," he said. "Or they say, ‘What are you going to do for us?' "
At one house, Mr. Palma encountered a slightly different response. Iris Gonzalez, 51, a Puerto Rican who is office manager for a construction company, said she planned to vote. Had it not been for the federal lawsuit, she declared, "there would be no chance for a Latino to get elected."
If no Latino wins, some village officials have privately fretted, the case could end up back in federal court, which will retain jurisdiction for three election cycles. But Mayor Pilla said he thought that possibility was "very remote."
"We have gone above and beyond in terms of implementing this new election system," he said. "I think it's going to level the playing field a little bit."