By Ben Conery | The Washington Times | April 8, 2010 (Original Context)
A feud involving local elections in a small North Carolina city is now a battleground over the future of one of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act’s most critical and contentious elements.
Several residents of Kinston, N.C., filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging an Obama administration decision that the town must keep political parties in local elections because equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.
Kinston voters decided overwhelmingly in a 2008 referendum to eliminate partisan elections, but the Justice Department stopped the change because the city is among 12,000 almost exclusively Southern voting districts that require department approval before making any changes to voting procedures.
