Yakima Washington has been sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.  Election Law Center reported last year that threats to sue Yakima face legal problems. According to people familiar with the details of Yakima population numbers, Gingles One simply cannot be satisfied in Yakima unless non-citizen population is used.  Gingles One requires any proposed minority district to have a majority minority population within the confines of the district.  Only if non-citizen and illegal aliens are used, can a district be drawn where Gingles One is satisfied.  If a judge agreed with the plaintiffs in Yakima, it would have the effect of diluting citizen votes to benefit non-citizen populations.  Because of this, Yakima should aggressively fight the lawsuit and not settle under any condition. 

None of this is a surprise to the plaintiffs.  To the contrary, the lawsuit was concocted by Joaquin Avila.  Avila hails from academia and is a well known advocate for illegal alien voting.  If you can’t get them to vote, you might as well get them represented in government.  This is an extremely important issue that deserves national attention.  It is the beachhead for a legal concept foreign to American law, that illegal aliens deserve political representation.  It is a position that the Justice Department under Eric Holder has adopted in a case against the City of Irving (TX).  It received virtually no attention but was covered here at Election Law Center.