Voting in Port Chester
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- March
- 30
Here’s one view about Port Chester—where the U.S. Department of Justice wants to ensure that Hispanics are equal participants in village politics.
Leovi Fumero came to the United States from Cuba in 1970 and became a citizen five years later. She says she does not want the election system to be redesigned for the benefit of Hispanics.
“Port Chester is a little village,” she told me. “We have lived here all together.”
The Department of Justice is proposing that the village move from a village-wide vote for each trustee to voting based on districts. It has sued the village in a voting rights case.
But different ethnic groups should not be separated by different voting districts, Fumero said. Some people simply don’t vote, she said. They don’t stay long and they don’t participate.
And she argued that if earlier Irish and Italian immigrants became part of the political process without intervention by the federal government, why not the Hispanics also.
“I had my right to vote,” she said. (She is not registered in any political party.)
I’ve gotten quite a few emails about Port Chester and what it should do and I’ll try to get a variety of views on my blog over the next days.
This entry was posted
on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 6:00 pm by Noreen O'Donnell.
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