Representatives of three organizations opposed to the Guilford County school board's redistricting plan called on three black school board members Thursday to withdraw their votes for the plan.

School board members Johnny Hodge, Keith Green and Calvin Boykin declined, although Hodge and Green said they would discuss the issue with other members of the board and residents of their school board districts.

The school board approved the plan by an 8-3 vote on April 27, ending a process that took almost 2 years and created a great deal of controversy and sometimes heated debate throughout the county.

Members of the N.C. Racial Justice Network, along with Greensboro City Councilman Earl Jones, who also represents the NAACP, and the Rev. Nelson Johnson of the Greensboro Pulpit Forum, sharply questioned the three school board members on their reasons for voting in favor of the plan. Harding Edwards, the other black member on the 11-member school board, voted against the plan.

Jones told the three men that they should have "a black agenda" on the board. "White schoolchildren are already being taken care of. Black children are the ones who are hurting the most," Jones said.

"Black school board members should be steadfast in looking out for a black agenda."

Boykin responded that he votes "the way my heart tells me to vote."

Jones and members of the Racial Justice Network especially wanted to know why Hodge voted to pass the plan to redraw school attendance lines. It was their understanding, they said, that Hodge promised Melvin "Skip" Alston, the NAACP's state president, that he would vote against the plan.

That's not true, Hodge told Jones and Ervin Brisbon of the Racial Justice Network. "I told Skip I was on the fence, and that I could go either way," Hodge said.

Hodge, Green and Boykin said they voted for the plan because they believed a majority of their constituents wanted them to vote for it. "I heard from an awful lot of people, call them a 'silent majority,' who supported the plan," Hodge said.

Boykin said a "significant majority" of people he talked with "thought we were on the right track."

"I'm telling you," Green declared, in response to sharp questions from the group, "the people I talked with agreed with the plan."

Jones, Johnson and Racial Justice Network members said the redistricting plan should be scrapped because it does not offer solutions for the wide achievement gap between black and white schoolchildren. The three black members should use their influence to call for a new vote, they said.

Boykin and Green said they didn't understand how scrapping the plan would help narrow the achievement gap between black and white children.

"We can work on that. We are working on that," Green said. "The achievement gap is something that's been there a long time and we're addressing it."

Green said it was his opinion that another vote on redistricting "would never satisfy everybody in this room."

A board member unhappy with proposals for redistricting for single-member districts says he may put off his retirement to run again.

Last November, voters decided a majority of Hillsborough School Board members should be elected from single-member districts as opposed to facing voters countywide.

Now, the lines for those districts must be drawn, which has prompted one School Board incumbent to put off his previously announced plans for retirement.

Glenn Barrington, elected to the School Board as a resident of District 1, said Tuesday that he is unhappy with the recommended options for redistricting presented by Hillsborough Elections Supervisor Pam Iorio.

"I've said in the past I would not run, but I'm not going to make a final decision before this redistricting is done," Barrington said. "That way I can have some control over my district."

The changes are necessary, Iorio said, because the intent behind single-member districting is to assist minorities in getting a representative elected to governing boards.

Currently, no district is more than 19.5 percent black or 17.6 percent Hispanic, which means the U.S. Justice Department will not find the current districts in conformance with the Voting Rights Act, Iorio said.

Under her recommended changes, blacks would make up 39 percent of the registered voters in one district. In another district, Hispanics would make up 21 percent.

Should Barrington run for re-election in 2000, Iorio is suggesting redistricting that would place Barrington's Seminole Heights neighborhood into a district that would also encompass Brandon.

Under Florida law, an incumbent's residence must be kept within his existing district.

Should Barrington not seek another term, Iorio's preferred option is for District 1 to become a rural, southeastern zone, combining such communities as Brandon, Riverview, Apollo Beach, Sun City, Wimauma and Ruskin, but not Seminole Heights.

Either way, Barrington is unhappy.

"I don't like gerrymandering. I don't think it's necessary," he added. "I prefer to keep the districts just the way they are and if we have to go to (the Justice Department) with it, then we'll go to Justice."

Iorio presented her recommendations at a board workshop Tuesday, noting that it is the School Board's responsibility to draw a final plan after holding public hearings.

She said she would like to see the redistricting completed by July, a year before candidates must pay qualifying fees for the 2000 election.

Iorio discussed five options, but recommended two.

The preferred of the two would have District 4 encompassing Plant City, Thonotosassa, Temple Terrace, New Tampa and part of Lutz.

District 3 would encompass northwest Hillsborough, including such areas as Carrollwood, Odessa, Keystone, Forest Hills and part of Town 'N Country.

The rest of Town 'N Country would be in District 2, which also would include south Tampa, Davis Islands, West Tampa and Seminole Heights. It would be 21 percent Hispanic.

District 5, which would be 39 percent black, would include Ybor City, College Hill, part of Thonotosassa and the north University area. That seat is currently held by Doris Ross Reddick, the School Board's sole black member, who said Tuesday that she is planning to seek re-election in 2000.

If Barrington were to run, the preferred option would, among other things, divide the Brandon/Valrico area and take New Tampa out of District 4 and into District 2.

Also up for re-election in 2000 are Sharon Danaher in District 3 and Carol Kurdell, who holds the District 7 at-large seat.

Before the shift in School Board elections, five members had to live within residence districts but were elected countywide. With the change, there remain two at-large seats open to all county residents and determined by all county voters.

Bossier Parish in northwestern Louisiana has a long history of racial discrimination and segregation. So in the early 1990s when the school board began debating a plan to form new districts to elect school board members, the US Justice Department took a close look.

The department took issue with the fact that even though African-Americans make up more than 20 percent of the parish population, none of the proposed 12 election districts included a district with a majority of black voters.

Justice Department lawyers tried to block implementation of the redistricting plan, but were overruled by a three-judge panel.

The judges ruled that since the new plan did not further dilute the voting strength of African-Americans in Bossier Parish, it could not be blocked under the Voting Rights Act.

Government lawyers in the case say the judges took too narrow a view of the law, and that any discriminatory redistricting plan - including one that maintains discrimination at a constant level - must be invalidated.

Today the US Supreme Court will consider whether Bossier Parish's voting districts must be upheld or redrawn.

The case involves a technical interpretation of a fine point in the voting rights law. But on a broader level the case is significant because the court's decision will likely offer guidance to scores of other jurisdictions across the country when they attempt to draw their own voting districts following the 2000 census.

The case points up the legal difficulty in drawing voting districts that neither empower nor disenfranchise particular groups of voters.

In places where there is a history of past racial discrimination, the Justice Department has used the Voting Rights Act to detect and prevent illegal efforts by the white majority to prevent black voters from exerting political clout at the polls.

On the other side, some communities feel the Justice Department and civil rights groups are prone to go too far in insisting on the creation of districts with a majority of black voters. They argue that the use of racial criteria to increase the possibility of the election of black candidates is illegal gerrymandering and a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

At issue in the Bossier Parish case is how much discrimination is necessary to justify blocking a redistricting plan. Lawyers for the school board argue that the Voting Rights Act only bars redistricting plans with a "retrogressive purpose." That means the new districts are intended to dilute the political power of blacks below existing levels.

Bossier Parish says there was no evidence that the new districts would reduce black political clout from existing levels and, thus, the new districts must be permitted.

Justice Department lawyers counter that the Voting Rights Act is broad enough to bar any ongoing discrimination in drawing new voting districts - regardless of whether the new districts further dilute black voting strength or maintain discrimination at a constant level.

The act requires the courts to decide whether a redistricting plan has a discriminatory purpose, not merely whether it has a retrogressive purpose, the government says.

The school board says it adopted an identical voting district plan as the county government, in part because that plan had already been pre-approved as nondiscriminatory by the Justice Department.

In addition, in the eight years since the litigation began, three African-Americans were elected to the 12-member school board under the allegedly discriminatory redistricting plan. District officials point to this as proof that the plan was not discriminatory.

But government lawyers and civil rights activists say the issue is the intent of the school board at the time the plan was enacted, not what has happened since the board's decision.

Government lawyers say that the school board ignored a viable proposal that two districts could be drawn in a compact manner that would have included a majority of black voters. They say the school board's decision not to adopt the proposal for majority black districts is evidence of an intent to discriminate.

"Our contention in this case is that they already had zero districts with a black majority of voters, you can't get any worse than that," says Edward Still of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "We have a case involving the intention of maintaining the discriminatory status quo. The question is whether that is enough [to block the redistricting plan]."

Lawyers for the school board say Bossier Parish and other similar jurisdictions, are facing a no-win situation.

"If you don't maximize the majority-minority districts in your redistricting plan, the Department of Justice comes down on you and says you are racists," says Michael Rosman of the Center for Individual Rights, which is helping represent Bossier Parish in the case. "And if you do, you get sued [by white voters] under the equal protection clause of the Constitution."

If there had been a single banner to represent the views of those who spoke up Tuesday night about attendance line changes for public schools in Guilford County, it might begin with, "Not my child."

"Don't use us for diversity," some parents told school board members, who are one week away from approving a school redistricting plan after three years of work.

"We'll vote against the bond to hold up new school construction," many of the nearly 90 speakers threatened during the almost three-hour public forum, where many school board members took notes but made no comments.

"My child has been in three schools in three years - we need stability," another person said during the next-to-last chance the public has to talk with the board about redistricting.

The proposed plan, released in December, was put together largely by citizens committees during the past three years, using guiding principles that sometimes conflicted - send children to schools close to home and promote diversity.

When it takes effect, the redistricting plan will end most crosstown busing, which has been used to integrate schools in Greensboro and High Point since the early 1970s. A major problem is that Guilford County housing patterns are, for the most part, not racially diverse. School officials have responded by using a number of strategies, including doubling the number of allocated slots in magnet schools.

About 50 people from the Lake Jeanette area, including Air Harbor, the Brandt Ridge Road and the Tamannary Forest subdivisions, showed up to lobby the board against removing them from the Jesse Wharton attendance zone. The families were zoned into Jesse Wharton last summer. But the redistricting plan would send them to Brightwood and then to Northeast Middle and Northeast High. If they stayed in Jesse Wharton, they could go to Mendenhall Middle and Page High School.

School officials say the children are being moved to help alleviate overcrowding at Jesse Wharton, which opened this past fall.

"That will make the third school in my son's three years in public school," said Wally Pegram, who said he moved to Granville Estates in part so that his two children could attend the new school. "I don't think that's fair."

Parents whose children may soon attend Aycock Middle said there are other predominantly white neighborhoods closer to the middle school than theirs. They also said they were included in the attendance lines to put more white people in the school.

"You are discriminating against me because of my color," said Christy Warmath, who lives in Guilford Hills. "You are violating my civil rights."

Parents in the Meadows of Jamestown and Meadow Ridge neighborhoods said their children will be bused past Florence Elementary, a school just a tenth of a mile from their home, to Montlieu Elementary, about six miles away.

"I'm thinking this line of thinking is inconsistent with your principles," said Reginald Blanks of the Meadow Ridge community - just a mile down the road from Florence. "I ask myself if I'm wrong, and the more I think about it, you are."

Some Claxton Elementary parents also complained that their children were needlessly being bused away from what they considered their neighborhood school. Children from the Friendly Acres subdivision - about 5 percent of the school's enrollment - are being sent to Guilford Middle, while the overwhelming majority of Claxton students move on to Northwest Middle, the parents complained. The children from Friendly Acres will be separated from the classmates they've known for six years - and during the hardest transitional years, they told the school board.

"Please don't send our children to a middle school where they don't know anyone," said Sheri Lyon, a Friendly Acres parent. She adds that fewer than 10 children will be involved in the move.

Susan Antin, who lives within a mile of Southwest High School, said that she can even hear the school band practice from her porch.

"I was amazed to discover that we were being assigned to Andrews," Antin said.

Some parents told the school board that they will turn their attention toward the county commissioners, who must approve putting on a ballot the $370 million bond referendum that the school board says it needs to finance new school construction and renovations at older schools.

"Our children are too important," said Angela Lawrence, a parent who said she no longer had any confidence in the school board. "There will be no vote for a bond referendum."

Tim Hopkins, a Smith High School parent, said the proposed attendance lines "sanction white flight."

He said he couldn't see how children who attend Alderman Elementary - which includes families in Kings Mill and nearby predominantly white neighborhoods off High Point Road - will attend Ragsdale and not Smith High School, which he said is closer.

"That's a statement on your part, that white flight is OK," Hopkins told the board.

After the forum ended, some parents said they had no confidence that the board was listening.

"We've been saying this for months," said Cathy Hilliard, a Shady Lawn Place parent who wants her child to attend the nearer Kiser, not Aycock as the maps are currently drawn. "They don't discuss it. It doesn't even warrant discussion.

When the City Council considers giving final approval to a redistricting plan Tuesday, William Bond Jr. has one simple request.

Bond, 76, lives in the northern part of District 5, which primarily covers Midtown.

No offense intended, he says, but he's really hoping his home won't be transferred to District 1, which includes parts of North Memphis, Raleigh and Frayser.

"I want to stay where we are," Bond said. "I don't want to be part of the Frayser jokes. They don't have that good of a name."

Bond may not get his wish: He lives in one of two voting precincts slated for transfer from District 5 to District 1.

It may not be much consolation, but thousands of Memphians face similar changes.

The council is adjusting its district boundaries to accommodate the recent annexation of Hickory Hill, which brought nearly 50,000 new residents into the city.

But the changes aren't confined to Districts 2 and 3, the two southeastern council districts that will absorb the new Hickory Hill voters.

To keep the populations of each district as equal as possible, council attorney Allan Wade developed a plan that adjusts all district boundaries.

That means about 35,000 people who used to vote in Districts 2 and 3 would be reassigned to other districts.

Almost 23,000 residents in District 6, which covers the southwestern part of the city, would change districts.

In the other council districts, the numbers of residents voting in new districts would vary from about 4,600 to 10,700 under Wade's plan.

The district lines are used to determine both the council and city school board representation.

The city is divided into seven districts. Voters in each district elect one representative for the council and school board.

There are also two so-called super districts, each of which covers roughly half the city. Voters in each super district select three more representatives to the council.

Voters throughout the entire city elect two school board members to represent the city in "at-large" seats.

After two workshop sessions to discuss redistricting, the council gave preliminary approval to Wade's plan at two previous meetings. The changes will be official if the council approves them again after a public hearing Tuesday.

Bond isn't the only person dissatisfied with the proposed changes.

At least two people who have been thinking about running for council seats - TaJuan Stout Mitchell and Jerry Benya - would be switched to new districts.

Both Mitchell and Benya wonder if they were intentionally targeted for new districts to thwart their potential challenges to incumbent council members.

"I don't believe in coincidences when it comes to Memphis politics," said Benya, who's been thinking about challenging incumbent John Vergos in District 5 this fall.

Benya lives in one of the precincts slated to switch to District 1.

Although Wade said the plan was designed to ensure proper racial and population balances in each district, Benya thinks the council's attorney may have tried a bit too hard to appease his bosses on the City Council.

Mitchell, who represents District 3 on the school board, has similar concerns.

She has been mulling a run against District 3 council incumbent Jerome Rubin, but under the plan, her voting precinct would be switched to District 6.

Besides denying Mitchell the opportunity to run against Rubin, the change also would preclude her from seeking re-election to her school board seat in District 3.

Council members, Mitchell said, were allowed to give Wade input on how they thought the lines should be redrawn, but others outside City Hall didn't get the same opportunities.

"There was definitely some discussion (with council members) about the lines and where they would be," Mitchell said. "He (Wade) did everything he could to protect their seats, but he didn't give school board members the same opportunities."

Wade said he wasn't trying to foil Benya or Mitchell's plans. He doesn't know where either of the two prospective candidates lives, he said.

He tried to keep the district demographics balanced to prevent a legal challenge under the federal Voting Rights Act, Wade said.

To settle a lawsuit four years ago, the council approved a redistricting plan intended to mirror the city's overall population. To do that, Wade adjusted the district boundaries to ensure that four of the seven regular districts and one of the two super districts would remain majority black.

Wade said that task was particularly difficult to accomplish in District 3, since the closest Hickory Hill precincts are majority white.

To counter the diluted black vote, Wade switched some more predominantly black District 6 precincts with some of the precincts in District 3, which have lower black populations.

Wade said Mitchell's precinct is among a handful that could be swapped to bolster District 3's black population, which is still slated to drop from 70 percent to 60 percent after redistricting.

"I don't think I could have just picked and chosen any other precincts than the ones I did," Wade said.

In the District 5-to-District 1 swap, Wade said he was trying to ensure a majority white population for District 1.

Although Wade could have transferred some adjacent precincts from District 2, they wouldn't have helped bolster District 1's demographics as much as the two District 5 precincts.

By using the District 2 precincts instead of the District 5 precincts, District 1's white population would drop from 53 percent to 51 percent, Wade said.

Wade denied claims that he was biased toward incumbent council members.

"I've tried to do it (redistricting) really technically and legally," Wade said. "These are technical changes that we have to make. I would hope we could keep politics out of it."

Both Mitchell and Benya also question whether the public has had adequate opportunities to review the changes.

Wade unveiled his draft of the plan at a council retreat in Olive Branch in January. Council members suggested a few changes, which were incorporated into a second draft Wade presented at an informal workshop session last month.

While lists of the precincts targeted for transfers have been available since the workshop meetings, city officials didn't print maps of the proposed realignment until a few days ago.

Wade said the delay was due to logistical problems in the city's graphics department. Mitchell and Benya said the public should have had access to maps sooner.

"I think the public has the right to know where the lines are going to be, what wards and precincts would be affected, what it means to them," Mitchell said. "How do you vote on something twice when you've never produced a map?"

Nevertheless, council members say they'll be ready to make a final decision Tuesday.

Several said they don't see a need to tinker with the boundaries just to accommodate two potential candidates.

"You just can't anticipate unannounced candidates or partially announced candidates," Vergos said. "Like all other redistrictings, you give it your best shot. You can't please everybody."

Vergos noted that potential candidates affected by the transfer have several options, including running in their new districts, moving back to their old districts or seeking one of the super district seats.

"We're not depriving anyone of their right to run for City Council," Vergos said.

Councilman Rickey Peete sees a difference between Benya's situation and Mitchell's because Mitchell is a sitting officeholder.

Although Peete wouldn't say how he's prepared to vote, he's willing to listen to the arguments for keeping Mitchell in District 3.

Rubin said the council shouldn't worry about displacing Mitchell from her school board seat because she's publicly said she wouldn't seek another term.

"Mrs. Mitchell announced as much as a year ago that she didn't intend to seek election to her school board seat," Rubin said.

"This seems to be a non-issue for the council to deal with in that context. If Mrs. Mitchell has changed her mind and decided to seek re-election to her school board seat, then that's a whole other matter," he said.

Mitchell said she'll announce her political plans after Tuesday's meeting.

Some council members said they would be willing to delay the final vote if there are issues that can't be resolved at Tuesday's meeting.

"If there are concerns from citizens of this city, I feel we should delay," Councilman Joe Brown said. "We have to hear the outcry of the citizens. I want it to be a fair process for everyone."

Council member Barbara Swearengen Holt also said a delay is "a possibility."

"There's no real urgency," Holt said. "I don't see the harm in that."

Council chairman Joe Ford wants to have the redistricting process completed before the candidate-qualifying period for this year's elections begins May 15.

Wade said he doubts minor amendments to the plan could be made without upsetting the demographic balance.

"You can't make one change without affecting everything else," Wade said. "I would have to go back to Square 1. I'm not sure I could do it before the deadline."

White bloc voting prevents blacks from electing judges of their choice in urban Ohio counties, attorney James L. Hardiman told a federal appellate panel Wednesday.

White votes not only overwhelm black votes, he said, but this history of defeats has a "chilling effect" on the willingness of African-Americans to run for judgeships and voter choices.

As a result, blacks are "woefully" underrepresented on urban Ohio municipal, common pleas and appellate courts, Mr. Hardiman said, and this reality violates the Voting Rights Act.

Mr. Hardiman represents black voters challenging countywide ballots in Hamilton and other urban counties.

None of that is true, countered N. Victor Goodman, who represents the state, but even if it were, there is no court-approved remedy.

The two lawyers were making their best case during oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati.

They were there because U.S. District Judge George Smith in Columbus rejected the black voters' complaint and Mr. Hardiman's clients wouldn't accept defeat.

Mr. Hardiman asked 6th Circuit Judges Eugene E. Siler Jr., Martha Craig Daughtrey and Ronald Lee Gilman to overturn that verdict and return the case to Judge Smith to craft an alternative electoral system.

Mr. Goodman urged the 6th Circuit to affirm Judge Smith, saying "minority preferred" candidates frequently are elected when they are backed by the dominant party.

The law, he added, does not require the minority preferred candidate to be black.

It could be months before the panel hands down its ruling.

In Hamilton County, the statewide case includes the 20-judge common pleas court and the six-judge 1st District Court of Appeals. No black judge sits on the appellate court and one holds a common pleas judgeship.

In other urban counties, the suit includes municipal courts. Not in Hamilton County where the municipal court is unique.

Earlier, similar litigation led to creation of seven judicial districts, including two with enough black voters to assure the election of black municipal court judges.

That contradicts Mr. Goodman's claim there is no workable remedy to Ohio's "long and rich history of racism," Mr. Hardiman said.

But Mr. Goodman said courts steadfastly have refused to order redistricting to resolve black complaints of vote dilution in judicial elections in predominantly white urban counties.

Only a politically dictated settlement led to the municipal court deal and no other Ohio urban county has emulated Hamilton County, Mr. Goodman responded.

Finally, Mr. Goodman said, there is no proof that countywide voting has a "chilling effect" on black judicial aspirations or voters.

He said Mr. Hardiman is seeking judges in numbers proportional to African-Americans in the voting population and that's not allowed by the Voting Rights Act.

The act assures African-Americans the right to register, vote, run and otherwise participate in elections, but it does not guarantee them a certain number of black judges, Mr. Goodman said.

White bloc voting dilutes that right, Mr. Hardiman countered. "In order to win, you've got to be an exception," and that's not good enough.

A compromise redistricting plan that would allow state Sen. Terrell Starr (D-Forest Park) to move to Jonesboro and retain his election district is likely to be offered during the legislative session, but some Clayton African-American leaders are opposed to any redistricting before the 2000 census.

State Sen. Greg Hecht (D-Jonesboro) said he plans to introduce a substitute plan to allow Starr's new home to come into the 44th Senate District but would have less impact on black voting strength, the crux of objections from African-American leaders.

Hecht showed his plans to the Clayton NAACP chapter last week and described the reaction as mixed.

The Clayton branch voted at the same meeting to write letters to the members of the county legislative delegation urging no redistricting.

"Several persons expressed concern (about the redistricting)," said Joseph Wheeler, president of the Clayton NAACP. "Some felt it was an attempt to dilute the black vote."

The first plan would have swapped three Riverdale precincts in Starr's district with three Jonesboro precincts in the 34th District, represented by Hecht. It would have reduced the number of black voters in Starr's district from 27 percent to 25 percent, meaning about 1,800 black voters would have moved into Hecht's district.

Hecht said his plan would affect "less than 350" black voters or about a half of 1 percent.

Hecht added that his plan would affect the least number of black voters possible and leaves in Starr's district the three Riverdale precincts that raised an alarm with some of Clayton's black leaders, because they have a heavy number of African-American voters.

Starr has denied he was attempting to dilute black voting strength in his district. He said he was looking for a way to move to a new home and remain in the 44th District at the same time.

State Sen. Terrell Starr (D-Forest Park) wants to move from Forest Park to Jonesboro and has sought to have his district lines redrawn to include his new home.

But some Clayton County African-American leaders have charged Starr is trying to dilute black voting strength through the proposed new district.

"Simply put, my wife wanted to build a house," Starr said last week. "There's just nothing sinister about it. I can't see it diluting anything."

The proposal would move three precincts from Starr's 44th state Senate District into the 34th District represented by state Sen. Greg Hecht (D-Jonesboro) and move three from the 34th to the 44th.

The redistricting would reduce the number of blacks of voting age in Starr's district from about 27 percent of the total to about 25 percent, according to state reapportionment officials, while raising the percentage in District 34 from about 9.5 percent to about 11.6 percent. Those numbers are based on 1990 census figures.

School board member Valencia Seay and other black leaders contend Starr would swap black voters for white voters. Seay and Joseph Wheeler, chairman of the Clayton NAACP chapter, vowed to fight the redistricting in the Legislature and bring it before the U.S. Justice Department, which judges redistricting under the Voting Rights Act.

"We feel these are 1990 census figures and don't represent the true picture," Seay said. "Why now? Why not wait until the new census in just a couple of years?"

According to the 1990 census, Starr's district now has nearly 24,000 black residents of voting age. If the redistricting is approved, 1,828 blacks of voting age would be redistricted into Hecht's district.

Starr said the change in black voters is slight and the district likely will be redrawn after the 2000 census anyway.

"I'd love to keep my district the way it is," Starr said. The senator said he was losing Democratic voters and picking up a heavily Republican area.

In the early 1990s, Starr said he fought hard to keep the north Clayton areas in his district when the 10th District of state Sen. Nadine Thomas (D-Ellenwood) was moved into Clayton during reapportionment after the 1990 census. Later, the lines were redrawn again and Thomas was removed from Clayton and Starr picked up her territory.

Clayton members of the House, where the redistricting bill went after passing the state Senate, said they were unaware of the redistricting until they started getting calls inquiring about the bill.

"It would have been nice if there had been a delegation meeting so we could have gone through the criteria and so you don't get blind-sided," said state Rep. Gail Buckner (D-Jonesboro).

Buckner and other Clayton House members questioned whether the redistricting would win approval from the Justice Department.

"From what I know from my own redistricting, I don't think Justice is going let it pass," Buckner said.

If you thought you heard enough about constitutional revision last year, take a deep breath. Here it comes again.

Senators are talking about amending the Constitution again next year to change how the Legislature redistricts itself and Florida's congressional seats after the 2000 census.

They want to start the process as soon as the detailed census data is available - sometime in 2001 - rather than wait until the regular session in 2002, as the Constitution now requires. They also want to take up the redistricting plans in a special session that would deal with nothing else.

These changes are fine, as far as they go. It has proved impossible for legislators to reasonably debate budgets and laws while they are trying to stab each other in the back over who will survive redistricting and who will not. And when they are done, not enough time is left for required reviews by the Florida Supreme Court and by the U.S. Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act, let alone for ensuing federal court challenges. In July 1992, so many issues were still unresolved that the deadline for filing for legislative seats had to be extended.

What's wrong with the changes - as discussed this week in the select redistricting committee that Sen. Jack Latvala, R-Palm Harbor, chairs - is what's not among them. No one is bringing up the independent redistricting commission that the Constitution Revision Commission nearly put on the ballot last year. No one is talking about moving beyond single-member districts to more sophisticated voting plans that could broaden representation for political as well as racial minorities. In short, it's all about keeping the Legislature in firm control of its members' own destinies. It is about keeping the public on the outside, looking in.

You couldn't blame the senators for being gun-shy on the question of an independent commission even if they liked the idea. Republican leaders spared no pressure last year to kill that idea when the Constitution Revision Commission briefly had the votes to move it to the ballot. The GOP intends the next redistricting to solidify their already firm control of the Legislature for at least another generation. There is no way around them except for do-gooder groups to attempt an initiative petition, of which there is talk but so far no action.

Meanwhile, there's danger that the Legislature might try to make the present bad situation worse. Sen. Jim Scott, R-Fort Lauderdale, a member of the select committee, raised the prospect of using the amendment on redistricting procedure to lock in the single-member district system the Legislature voluntarily adopted in 1982. The Constitution Revision Commission - of which he was a member - was poised to recommend this to the voters last year but it was killed in retaliation for the death of the independent redistricting commission proposal.

I write as a reformed advocate of single-member districting - older, sadder, wiser. Though it did open the Legislature to minorities and to more women, it did so at the cost of creating voting ghettoes that have left the white majority with a diminished sense of responsibility to minority constituents. Lani Guinier described this as the "triumph of tokenism."

Moreover, the single-member system has contributed to an undeniable increase in parochialism among legislators. In 1982, it was not apparent that better ways could be found to provide for minority representation. But there are now models of proportional representation that have proved their success elsewhere, and the Constitution should not be closed to them.

A possible example: Instead of electing six senators in separate districts, the voters of Pinellas and Hillsborough would elect six from a single group. But each voter could cast as many as six votes for a single candidate. Though the outcome might still be five Republicans and one Democrat, five whites and one African-American, the constituencies would be broader, and the Democrats now represented only by Republicans could no longer consider themselves voiceless in Tallahassee. Similar benefits would accrue to Republicans in Broward County.

It would be naive to expect the Legislature to opt for proportional representation any time soon, but one can reasonably insist that it not close the door. There is no need to carve the single-member district system into constitutional granite. Under the Voting Rights Act, no judge would permit Florida to scrap single-member districts except for something better. Until then, why not just leave well enough alone?

In time for the next round of post-census redistricting, the Supreme Court agreed Friday to resolve a long-running dispute over how the Voting Rights Act applies to new district lines that, while not making matters worse for minority voters, nonetheless fail for discriminatory reasons to make things better.

The case is a joint appeal by the Justice Department and a group of black voters in Bossier Parish in northwestern Louisiana. The 12-member Bossier Parish school board, with members elected from separate geographic districts, has never had a district with a black majority and, as of the 1992 redistricting at issue in the case, never had a black member. The population of the parish, or county, is 20 percent black, with black residents concentrated in two areas.

In drawing new lines after the 1990 census, the school board rejected a proposal from the local chapter of the NAACP that would have created two majority-black districts. Instead, it adopted the same lines that already had been drawn for the Police Jury, the local governing body, which had 12 majority-white districts.

After the Department of Justice refused in 1993 to approve the new school board lines, the board appealed, under provisions of the Voting Rights Act, to a special three-judge U.S. District Court. The court approved the redistricting, ruling that the absence of intent to make the plan "retrogressive"--to dilute black votes to a greater extent than they already were--was sufficient to pass Voting Rights Act review.

In their Supreme Court appeal, the Justice Department and the black plaintiffs are arguing that, even in a situation without actual or attempted retrogression, the Voting Rights Act bars approval of a plan that shows intent to entrench a status quo that has limited black electoral power.

The issue in the case is important in light of the coming round of redistricting, in which actual retrogression is less likely than the more subtle goal of entrenching an existing discriminatory system.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court set the stage Friday for an important ruling on voting rights by agreeing to study a dispute over how the Bossier Parish School Board's members are elected.

The court's eventual decision, expected by late June, will determine how easy or difficult it will be for the Justice Department to reject proposed election-law changes that hurt minority voting power in states and counties covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The School Board for years has had one member elected to a four-year term from each of 12 districts. About 20 percent of the parish's population is black, and none of the 12 districts has a black majority.

As of 1990, no black ever had been elected to the School Board. After the 1990 census required a redrawing of the school board election map, the local NAACP chapter proposed creating two black-majority districts.

The board opted instead for a new map in 1992 with no such district, the same map that had been adopted by the Bossier Parish Police Jury, the governing body of the county.

Even though the Police Jury's plan had received the Justice Department's approval required by the 1965 law, the School Board's proposed redistricting plan did not. Justice Department lawyers decided that the plan would dilute minorities' voting strength.

A legal battle ensued, and in 1997 the Supreme Court used the Bossier Parish case to make it harder for the Justice Department to withhold approval of proposed election changes.

The Voting Rights Act's Section 5 allows the federal government to veto proposed changes if they are deemed to have a discriminatory "purpose or effect." The act's Section 2 is more stringent and prohibits any voting practice that would dilute the political clout of racial minorities.

In its 1997 decision, the nation's highest court said Justice Department lawyers cannot refuse to approve a proposal under Section 5 by deciding that the change would violate Section 2. The court said a proposed change has a prohibited "effect" only if it would be retrogressive - leaving minority voters worse off than they are under a current plan.

The justices then sent the case back to a three-judge federal court in Louisiana so it could decide whether federal approval can be withheld for a discriminatory "purpose" other than leaving minority voters worse off.

Justice Department lawyers contend that an unlawful purpose could be maintaining a system that dilutes minority voting power.

But the three-judge court in Louisiana ruled last May that no retrogressive purpose had been proved and refused to consider any other purported purpose. The three-judge court approved the 1992 redistricting plan.

In one of two related appeals acted on Friday, Justice Department lawyers argued that the Bossier Parish School Board has been allowed "to entrench a status quo that denies black citizens . . . an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice."

The current election system is being allowed to "hinder improvement in the political position of blacks . . . because the record did not demonstrate that the board intended to make the position of blacks worse than before," the appeal said.

It added that the May ruling "threatens seriously to impair enforcement of the act."

The three-judge court's ruling was challenged separately in an appeal by George Price, president of the Bossier Parish chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Both appeals were granted review.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court set the stage Friday for an important ruling on voting rights by agreeing to study a dispute over how the Bossier Parish School Board's members are elected.

The court's eventual decision, expected by late June, will determine how easy or difficult it will be for the Justice Department to reject proposed election law changes that hurt minority voting power in states and counties covered by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The School Board for years has had each member elected to a four-year term in each of 12 districts. About 20 percent of the parish's population is African American, and none of the 12 districts has a black majority.

As of 1990, no black person ever had been elected to the School Board. After the 1990 census required a redrawing of the School Board election map, the local NAACP chapter proposed creating two black- majority districts.

The School Board opted instead for a new map in 1992 with no such district, the same map that had been adopted by the Bossier Parish Police Jury.

Even though the Police Jury's plan had received the Justice Department approval required by the 1965 law, the School Board's proposed redistricting plan did not. Justice Department lawyers decided that the plan would dilute minorities' voting strength.

A legal battle ensued, and in 1997 the Supreme Court used the Bossier Parish case to make it harder for the Justice Department to withhold approval of proposed election changes.

The Voting Rights Act's Section 5 allows the federal government to veto proposed changes if they are deemed to have a discriminatory "purpose or effect." The act's Section 2 is more stringent, and prohibits any voting practice that would dilute the political clout of racial minorities.

In its 1997 decision, the nation's highest court said Justice Department lawyers cannot refuse to approve a proposal under Section 5 by deciding that the change would violate Section 2. The court said a proposed change has a prohibited "effect" only if it would be retrogressive - leaving minority voters worse off than they are under a current plan.

The justices then sent the case back to a three-judge federal court in Louisiana so it could decide whether federal approval can be withheld for a discriminatory "purpose" other than leaving minority voters worse off.

Justice Department lawyers contend that an unlawful purpose could be maintaining a system that dilutes minority voting power.

But the three-judge court in Louisiana ruled last May that no retrogressive purpose had been proved and refused to consider any other purported purpose. The three-judge court approved the 1992 redistricting plan.

In one of two related appeals acted on Friday, Justice Department lawyers argued that the Bossier Parish School Board has been allowed "to entrench a status quo that denies black citizens ... an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice."The current election system is being allowed to "hinder improvement in the political position of blacks ... because the record did not demonstrate that the board intended to make the position of blacks worse than before," the appeal said.

It added that the May ruling "threatens seriously to impair enforcement of the act."The three-judge court's ruling was challenged separately in an appeal by George Price, president of the Bossier Parish chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Both appeals were granted review.
 

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, in a victory for civil rights groups, ruled Wednesday that the Voting Rights Act requires counties to get federal approval before changing their election methods, even if the state has never run afoul of the law.

The justices on Wednesday also considered whether a panel of three federal judges was too quick in ruling that North Carolina legislators illegally redrew a voting district to give black voters more clout. A lawyer for the state told an apparently divided court that the district was drawn for legitimate partisan reasons and not for unlawful race-conscious motives.

The high court's decision marked a victory for Hispanic voters in California who contend their voting strength was sapped when a state law consolidated Monterey County's three judicial districts into one about 20 years ago.

The state had successfully argued in a lower court that the county did not need prior approval from the attorney general or a federal judge, as the Voting Rights Act generally requires, because the law's regulations do not apply to California.

The Voting Rights Act prohibits states and local jurisdictions from diluting the voting strength of minorities. States and localities found to have discriminated against minorities are considered covered under the law and may change their voting methods only with the prior approval, or "preclearance," of the attorney general or a federal court.

The Supreme Court, citing the Voting Right Act, said a county like Monterey, which is covered under the 1965 law, must get federal approval whenever it "seeks to administer" a change in its election practices. In its decision, the high court rejected California's argument that the constitutional framework of federalism, which limits federal authority over states, prohibits the U.S. government from questioning the election law of a state that is not governed by the Voting Rights Act.

On the contrary, the court said, the 15th Amendment gives Congress the explicit authority to prevent discrimination in voting.

"We have recognized that the act, which authorizes federal intrusion into sensitive areas of state and local policy-making, imposes substantial federalism costs," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in the court's majority decision.

"Recognizing that Congress has the constitutional authority to designate covered jurisdictions and to guard against changes that give rise to a discriminatory effect in those jurisdictions, we find no merit in the claim that Congress lacks 15th Amendment authority to require federal approval before the implementation of a state law that may have just such an effect in a covered county."

Joining O'Connor's opinion were Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

Monterey County has been under the jurisdiction of the Voting Rights Act since 1971, when the federal government concluded that the county illegally required would-be voters to pass a literacy test before they could cast ballots in the 1968 presidential election. California was not implicated in the unlawful test, and the federal government does not require that the state's voting changes be approved prior to their adoption.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's sole dissenter, noted the law's distinction between covered and uncovered jurisdictions. He said covered counties need federal preclearance only when the voting changes are a direct result of the policy choices of county leaders, not state lawmakers.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, agreed that Monterey County needed federal approval before changing its election method but disagreed with the court's finding that California lawmakers initiated the change. Monterey County leaders sought to alter its election method and then urged the California legislators to give them the legal authority to do so, not the other way round, Kennedy said.

Therefore, the county had discretion in the way it would change its voting method and, as a result, needed federal approval first, Kennedy said.

In the North Carolina case, the state's attorney argued that a controversial 1997 redistricting plan was designed to preserve an equal number of Democratic and Republican districts in the state. The fact that black voters were highly represented in the 12th Congressional District, the voting area at issue in the case, was an unintended result of that effort by Democrats, argued the attorney, Walter Dellinger.

But a panel of federal judges rejected that argument, ruling summarily 2-1 that the state legislature, in redrawing the district, violated the Voting Rights Act's prohibition on race-conscious districts.

Urging the justices to overrule the judicial panel, Dellinger argued that District 12 is "very sensible" and that its unusually narrow shape results not from an unlawful effort to increase the number of black voters but from the region's dense population.

However, Justice Scalia said that federal judges, looking at the odd shape of the district, could conclude the state "goes too far" in saying that race was not a motivating factor in the legislature's decision to redraw the district.

Attorney Robinson Everett, pressing the case of North Carolina voters challenging District 12, urged the justices to uphold the judicial panel's summary judgment in the voters' favor.

Everett said state legislators were using "code" words when they argued before the judges that the goal in redrawing the district was to ensure Democratic strength. They really wanted to preserve the voting strength of African-American Democrats in an effort to ensure the election of African-American candidates, and the judges recognized that, Everett argued.

But Justice Souter suggested that the judges should have conducted a trial before issuing their ruling because there is a legitimate dispute between the state and the voters regarding whether race was a motivation for the redrawn district.

The high court is expected to render its decision in Hunt vs. Cromartie by July.

PHOENIX - Think of Arizona's congressional and legislative districts as the true ink blot test for crazed incumbents.

"By drawing lines that pack as many voters of the incumbent's political party into a newly formed legislative district, the incumbents engage in the time-honored - or I should say, dishonored - rite of self-interest gerrymandering," said state Sen. George Cunningham, D-Tucson.

"The result is, if you look at a map of Arizona's districts, you'll see all sorts of shapes and configurations. You can find the Starship Enterprise, birds, boomerangs and umbilical cords."

Cunningham wants to see districts drawn so they do not overwhelmingly favor incumbents.

Yesterday, Cunningham and Rep. Susan Gerard, R-Phoenix, proposed removing the Legislature - and politics - from that process.

They will introduce a bill to turn the task over to a bipartisan redistricting commission. If their bill is approved by the Legislature, the issue would go to the voters in the November 2000 general election.

"Should the Legislature fail to refer this measure to the ballot for the year 2000 election, we will be prepared to begin in May of 1999 to circulate petitions and place this measure on the ballot through the initiative process," Cunningham told the Phoenix Nucleus Club in a speech.

Gerard said she doubts the redistricting bill will make it through the Legislature, for obvious reasons. But, she said, in the interest of fairness, she and Cunningham decided to offer it to the Legislature first.

"There will be a voter initiative in the end," Gerard predicted. "Incumbents want to protect themselves."

The Phoenix representative said she was in the Legislature when the last redistricting was done after the 1990 census.

"It was not pretty. It dominates the session," she said.

Districts are redrawn each decade, after the latest decennial census figures are released. The next ones will be drawn up after the 2000 general election but before the 2002 elections.

In drawing up district boundaries, the first thing lawmakers do is plot where all existing legislators serve so that they may draw their districts according to their political strengths, Gerard said.

That, she said, is wrong.

Cunningham called the process "disgraceful and dysfunctional."

He said that out of 30 legislative districts in Arizona, only three to six could be viewed as competitive.

And because only 1 out of 4 voters who cast ballots in the general elections participates in the primary elections, there is a tendency to elect the "most ideologically extreme candidates," he said.

Gerard said the public is ready to vote for non-partisan districts, even if legislators are not.

"I think it will be a real slam dunk. Voters clearly show over and over that they are sick of the politics and want a more representative government," she said.

Eleven states leave the task of redistricting to bipartisan redistricting commissions, Cunningham said.

REDISTRICTING BILL

These are the principle features that will included in the redistricting bill, which will be introduced later this week:

The commission will have nine members. Two each will be appointed by the speaker of the House and the House minority leader, as well as two appointments each by the Senate president and the Senate minority leader. These eight will then agree upon the appointment of a ninth member. If they fail to agree on that member, the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court will make the appointment.

The measure will include time lines under which the commission must conduct its business.

The measure will list state criteria and objectives on which the redistricting commission must base its congressional and legislative districts, such as compliance with the Voting Rights Act and political competitiveness.

TY TY, Ga. -- Ten years ago, peanut farmer Wayne Williams would no more have considered voting for a black man for Congress than he would have planted his crop in the chill of December.

Louie Perry Jr., down in Colquitt County, felt pretty much the same way. So did J.L. Tillman and, truth be told, most every other white farmer who tills the clay of southwest Georgia.

But on Nov. 3, Williams, Perry, Tillman and tens of thousands of others voted enthusiastically for Rep. Sanford Bishop, a black Democrat who won re-election convincingly in a rural, conservative district where nearly two-thirds of the voters are white.

Bishop won almost four out of every 10 white votes in the district. By comparison, David Dinkins won just a fourth of the white vote in 1989, when he became New York City's first black mayor.

Many of Bishop's white supporters acknowledge they had to overcome deep prejudices to vote for him. "I just wouldn't have thought a black man would know enough to do the job," Williams said. Other white farmers referred to the congressman matter-of-factly with the coarsest of racial epithets before explaining why they liked him so much.

Whatever whites want to call Bishop, their willingness to vote for him might signify a key development in Southern politics.

For years, the unwillingness of rural Southern whites to vote for blacks has been the cornerstone of redistricting policies aimed at maximizing minority representation. As legislatures prepare for redistricting after the 2000 census, opponents of racial redistricting view Bishop as compelling evidence that black candidates can win in white districts. Conversely, those who support race-based redistricting attribute Bishop's success to his incumbency, which was gained in a majority black district before the Supreme Court ordered a redistricting in 1992.

"There's no revolution that's occurred down here," said Thomas Chatmon, the son of a black civil rights pioneer. "It doesn't show that whites or blacks are willing to be colorblind. But what it does show is that southwest Georgians are willing to cohabitate, are willing to work together, that they know that there must be compromise on both sides in order to move together on our collective agenda. That's the reality. And absolutely that is progress."

During Bishop's three terms in Congress, large numbers of white Georgians have concluded that his accessibility and his influence -- particularly with other black House Democrats -- far outweigh any consideration of race.

"To start with I wasn't wild about him, because he was black," explained Williams, 55, who grows peanuts and tobacco. "So many black people around here, you just can't count on them. But he went around and made some talks, and we liked the way he talked. I've met him twice, and he talks to you, not above your head. If you have a problem, he'll help you out with it."

Bishop has earned the fealty of white constituents through his aggressive advocacy for federal farm programs, balanced budgets, welfare reform, school prayer and gun ownership. To suit his district, he has switched positions on issues such as the assault weapons ban, which he first supported and later opposed. He advertises himself as a conservative and reinforced that claim by becoming the only black member of the right-leaning Democratic caucus known as the Blue Dogs.

"There were people who never would have imagined voting for me," Bishop, 51, said. "But the majority vote their pocketbooks. They understand the precarious situation that the farming community is in, and they'll support people that help them."