A federal court in Albany agreed with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, the Law Office of Bryan L. Sells, and the ACLU of Georgia, that the Sumter County Board of Elections and Registration’s current school board district lines are unfair to African-Americans, who are 54% of the county’s population.
On Saturday, the court ruled that the current at-large method of voting for the county’s public education school board members disproportionately favored the white majority candidates over the black minority preferred candidates. Reverend Matt Wright, Jr., the plaintiff, brought the lawsuit against the county to change the at-large method of voting so that the African American community would have a fair chance to elect their candidate of choice to a seat on the public education school board.