PATRICK DUFFY, District Judge
This matter is before the Court upon the Magistrate Judge's recommendation that this Court grant Plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment on the three preconditions, as outlined in the United States Supreme Court decision, Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986), requisite to a Voting Rights Act claim pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1973. A party may object, in writing, to a magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation ("Report") within ten days after being served with a copy of that report. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). The Magistrate's Report was filed on April 26, 2002. Defendants filed timely objections on May 6, 2002.
DISCUSSION
I. Magistrate Judge's Report and Recommendation
The Magistrate Judge makes only a recommendation to this Court. The recommendation has no presumptive weight, and the responsibility for making a final determination remains with the Court. Mathews v. Weber, 423 U.S. 261, 269 (1976). The Court reviews de novo those portions of the Report to which a specific objection is made, and the Court may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the recommendation of the Magistrate, or recommit the matter to him with instructions. 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(C).
After a review of the entire record and the Report, and a de novo review of Defendants' objections, the Court finds that the Magistrate Judge fairly and accurately summarized the facts and applied the correct principles of law. Accordingly, the Magistrate Judge's Report is adopted in whole and incorporated into this Order by specific reference.
The Report sets forth in detail the relevant facts involved in this case, and the Court incorporates those facts as described in the Report without a recitation.
II. Legal Standard For Summary Judgment
To grant a motion for summary judgment, the Court must find that "there is no genuine issue as to any material fact." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). The Court is not to weigh the evidence but rather to determine if there is a genuine issue for trial. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 249 (1986). All evidence should be viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. Perini Corp. v. Perini Constr., Inc., 915 F.2d 121, 123-24 (4th Cir. 1990). "[W]here the record taken as a whole could not lead a rational trier of fact to find for the nonmoving party, disposition by summary judgment is appropriate." Teamsters Joint Council No. 83 v. Centra, Inc., 947 F.2d 115, 119 (4th Cir. 1991). "[T]he plain language of Rule 56(c) mandates the entry of summary judgment, after adequate time for discovery and upon motion, against a party who fails to make a showing sufficient to establish the existence of an element essential to that party's case, and on which that party will bear the burden of proof at trial." Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 322 (1986). The "obligation of the nonmoving party is `particularly strong when the nonmoving party bears the burden of proof.'" Hughes v. Bedsole, 48 F.3d 1376, 1381 (4th Cir. 1995) (quoting Pachaly v. City of Lynchburg, 897 F.2d 723, 725 (4th Cir. 1990)). Summary judgment is not "a disfavored procedural shortcut," but an important mechanism for weeding out "claims and defenses [that] have no factual bases." Celotex, 477 U.S. at 327.
III. Section 2 Violation
Plaintiffs have brought this action complaining that the present at-large system for electing members to the Charleston County Council was adopted with "an intent to discriminate against black voters and that it results in discrimination in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1973, and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States." (Pl.s' Mem. Supp. Partial Summ. J. at 1). To prevail upon their claim for a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Plaintiffs must first establish the following preconditions, as outlined by the United States Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles, 478 U.S. 30 (1986):
Section 2(a) of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits a State or its political subdivisions from imposing any voting practice "in a manner which results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." 42 U.S.C. § 1973(a). Section 2(b) of the Act, as amended in 1982, further provides that a violation of section 2(a) occurs,
if, based on the totality of circumstances, it is shown that the political processes leading to nomination or election in the State or political subdivision are not equally open to participation by members of a class of citizens protected by subsection (a) of this section in that its members have less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.
42 U.S.C. § 1973(b).
1. that the minority group at issue is sufficiently large and geographically compact to constitute a majority in a single-member district;
2. that the minority group is politically cohesive; and
3. that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it — in the absence of special circumstances, such as the minority candidate running unopposed — usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate.
Gingles, 478 U.S. at 50-51. If these preconditions are met, the Court must then determine under the "totality of circumstances" whether there has been a violation of Section 2.
The Magistrate Judge recommended that this Court grant Plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment as to each Gingles precondition. Because the Court finds the Magistrate Judge's Report thorough and well-reasoned, it is adopted in whole and incorporated into this Order. Defendants make the following objections only as to the Magistrate Judge's determination that no genuine issue of fact remains as to the third Gingles precondition — "white bloc-voting." The Magistrate Judge's recommendation that Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment, as to the first two preconditions, is not contested.
IV. Objections
First, Defendants contend that the Magistrate Judge improperly "collapsed the second and third preconditions of minority political cohesion and racial bloc voting into a single requirement that plaintiffs show `racially polarized voting.'" (Def.s' Obj. at 4). In support, Defendants reference the Magistrate Judge's remark that "[t]he second and third preconditions are generically referred to as a showing of racially polarized voting." (Def.s' Obj. at 4 n. 6 (quoting Report at 12)). The Court finds no error in either the Magistrate Judge's characterization or in his ultimate consideration of the second and third preconditions. Consistent with the law as recited by Defendants' in their own objections, the Magistrate Judge unequivocally considered the preconditions independent of each other. The Magistrate Judge quoted the relevant language from Gingles detailing the factual showing required to establish both preconditions. The Magistrate Judge then separately considered the portions of Defendants' expert's testimony regarding each precondition, concluding that Dr. Weber "conceded both points [preconditions]," (Report at 13). (See Report at 13-15).
The Magistrate was clear in his separate consideration of the preconditions. At page 13 of the Report, he states, "With regard to whether minority group members constitute a politically cohesive unit. . . ." (Report at 13). In contrast at page 15, the Magistrate transitions, "With regard to the block voting by white voters. . . ." (Report at 15). Excerpts from Dr. Weber's expert deposition testimony and other evidence material to the second and third preconditions followed each respective transition. Specifically, the Magistrate Judge quoted Dr. Weber's concession of the second and third preconditions, (Report at 13-14, 15), and cited "statistics presented by Dr. Weber and Dr. Arrington [which] indicated that majority white voting is sufficient to usually defeat the combined minority voting plus white `crossover'" votes in Charleston County," (Report at 15-16).
Moreover, it is wholly appropriate to characterize the second and third preconditions as means to a broader and more singular end. The inquiries into each, while discreet in execution, are married in purpose:
The purpose of inquiring into the existence of racially polarized voting is twofold: to ascertain whether minority group members constitute a politically cohesive unit and to determine whether whites vote sufficiently as a bloc usually
to defeat minority's preferred candidates. Thus, the question whether a given district experiences legally significant racially polarized voting requires discrete inquiries into minority and white voting practices.
Gingles, 478 U.S. at 56.
Accordingly, the United States Supreme Court itself defines racially polarized voting in terms of both preconditions. The Court, therefore, finds that the Magistrate Judge's characterization was appropriate and, further, that the Magistrate Judge made sufficiently independent findings as to each precondition.
Next, Defendants complain that the Magistrate Judge "imputed to Charleston County specific findings on racial polarization in State House and Senate elections made by a three-judge court in Colleton County Council v. McConnell, C.A. No. 01-3581-10 (D.S.C. Mar. 20, 2002)." (Def.s' Obj. at 5). Defendants argue that the Magistrate Judge should have made a more specific inquiry into the "characteristics of [the] challenged electoral system, not upon legislative or senate districts, or the level of cohesion or racial polarization in those districts." (Id.). The Magistrate Judge's alleged "reliance" on Colleton County, however, was complementary at best. The quoted passage from Colleton County, recited in the Report, simply acknowledges the statewide polarization of voting common at most electoral levels. (Report at 22). The Magistrate Judge was not imputing specific findings of polarized racial voting in legislative or senate districts to the electoral patterns of Charleston County Council elections, as Defendants would suggest, but rather referencing the general conclusion that racial polarization of voters continues to be characteristic of South Carolina elections:
Voting in South Carolina continues to be racially polarized to a very high degree, in all regions of the state and in both primary elections and general elections. Statewide, black citizens generally are a highly politically cohesive group and whites engage in significant white-bloc voting.
Colleton County Council, No. 01-3581, Slip op. P. 46-47 (March 20, 2002).
It is apparent from the Report that the findings in Colleton County did not form the basis of the Magistrate Judge's determination that the third Gingles precondition had been satisfied. Rather, the Magistrate Judge relied heavily on what he interpreted as the Defendants expert's express concession that the third Gingles precondition had been satisfied.
Defendants also contest this interpretation, arguing that the Magistrate Judge erroneously concluded that Dr. Ronald Weber, expert for Defendants, conceded that their was legally significant white bloc-voting such that the third Gingles precondition was satisfied. In support, Defendants cite, at length, Dr. Weber's deposition testimony and intimate that Plaintiffs' belabored a line of questioning concerning white-bloc voting to which Weber consistently answered that none existed to a legally significant degree. However, it is clear from the recited passages that the Magistrate Judge properly interpreted Dr. Weber's answers as a concession of the third Gingles precondition.
Defendants rely in part on the following exchange between the attorney for the United States and Dr. Weber:
A: I say: The candidates of choice of nonwhite voters are not usually defeated due to white block voting but due to partisan voting.
Q: When you use the word due there, are you saying that partisanship is a cause?
A: There is an implication of cause. I did not say are not usually defeated
because of white block voting, but because of partisan voting.
(Weber Dep. at 119-20).
Defendants argue that this exchange demonstrates that Dr. Weber "repeatedly emphasized that these election patterns were not legally significant white racial bloc voting, and repeatedly rejected the suggestion made through repetitive questions posed by the United States that minority or nonwhite voters were usually defeated due to white bloc voting." (Def.s' Obj. at 6). The Court disagrees.
It is apparent from Dr. Weber's deposition testimony that he rejected the conclusion that legally significant white-bloc voting occurred in Charleston County because he attributed the polarization to partisan differences rather than racial ones:
Q: There about middle ways down in paragraph Arabic Number 4, you state: For the most part, however, these are elections where whatever racial polarization in voting exists is not politically or legally consequential in that the candidates of choice of nonwhite voters are not usually defeated due to white block voting, but due to partisan voting.
A: Yes, sir.
(Weber Dep. at 114).
Issues of causation, however, are not relevant to the issue of white bloc-voting. The third precondition requires only that "the minority . . . demonstrate that the white majority votes sufficiently as a bloc to enable it — in the absence of special circumstances, such as the minority candidate running unopposed, usually to defeat the minority's preferred candidate." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51 (citation omitted). Importantly, the United States Supreme Court in its plurality opinion expressly stated that "[f]or purposes of § 2, the legal concept of racially polarized voting incorporates neither causation nor intent." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 62. Rather, racially polarized voting "means simply that the race of voters correlates with the selection of a certain candidate or candidates; that is it refers to the situation where different races . . . vote in blocs for different candidates." Id. More specifically, the Supreme Court defines racial polarization as "a consistent relationship between [the] race of the voter and the way in which the voter votes, or to put it differently, where black voters and white voters vote differently." Id. at 53 n. 21 (internal citations and quotations omitted). As the Magistrate rightly noted, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agrees that "the best reading of the several opinions in Gingles, is one that treats causation as irrelevant in the inquiry into the three Gingles preconditions, . . . but relevant in the totality of circumstances inquiry." Lewis v. Alamance County, North Carolina, 99 F.3d 600, 615 n. 12 (1996). Defendants ask the Court to revisit the Fourth Circuit's conclusion in Lewis and find instead that causation is in fact relevant to the third Gingles precondition. (Def.s' Obj. at 19). The Court, however, declines to entertain Defendants' request to reconsider Lewis, not simply out of deference to stare decisis but because the Court wholly concurs with the Fourth Circuit's interpretation of Gingles.
Dr. Weber's conclusion that the polarization of voters is caused by partisan differences, therefore, is simply not relevant to whether the third precondition has been satisfied. The above cited testimony crystalizes the confusion Defendants' have over the Magistrate Judge's interpretation of Dr. Weber's answers. While Defendants and Dr. Weber appear convinced that inquiry into the third precondition includes questions of causation, the Magistrate Judge rightly ignored such answers and instead focused on Dr. Weber's answers to a more narrowly tailored hypothetical, used by Plaintiffs' attorney to focus Dr. Weber on the relevant inquiry of white-bloc voting without regard to cause. Defendants contest the hypothetical for failing to properly consider the entire law of a Section 2 case, including cause. Their objection, however, as stated, misapprehends the specific inquiry this Court must make into white-bloc voting. The hypothetical and corresponding dialogue are quoted in relevant part:
Q: Let me ask you a hypothetical. Assume that to carry our burden under the third
Gingles preconditions, we, the plaintiffs, must prove the following: . . . that usually white voters vote for candidates different than the ones preferred by minority voters, and the candidates supported by the white voters win. Okay?
A: Okay.
Q: Further assume that all the plaintiffs have to prove — that's all the plaintiffs have to prove in a Section 2 case and that we do not have to prove that the reason or the cause of the polarization is race. Okay?
A: Um-hum.
Q: If that is the correct legal standard, based upon the hypothetical question that I've given you, and based upon your study in this case, using your working rules, isn't it true that the Court would conclude that voting is racially polarized in County Council questions?
[Defense counsel, Mr. Griffith objects to the question for omitting material required elements of a Section 2 case.]
By Mr. Coates: I'm not asking about whether or not we win. Mr. Griffith is correct. My question is only on the basis of that standard. If the Court decides that that standard is correct rather than the one that you've suggested in your report, then based upon your studies in this case, isn't true that the Court would conclude that voting is racially polarized in Charleston County for County Council elections?
[Defense counsel objected again.]
The Witness: Yeah I mean —
By Mr. Coates:
Q: I can ask it again if you want.
A: No, you don't need to ask it again because I clearly understand it. The difficulty I have is, you know, it's a hypothetical. So I'll accept it as a hypothetical because that is not the law. The law is totality of circumstances. It's been totality of circumstances in all these Section 2 cases.
Q: My question is simply on the issue of racial polarization.
A: On the simplistic notion that is involved in the preconditions of
Gingles, your case would continue to be alive because you have met the first prong. You can demonstrate, based on my analysis, that you can draw one district that is African-American in voting majority. You've got cohesion on the part of the minority community; and the preferences, be they Republican or whatever they are, where white voters do not support the Democrats, where the candidates of choice of the African-Americans are not white voters. So your case would continue to be alive to go with the totality of circumstances.
Q: And another way of saying that is based upon — if that is the correct standard in my hypothetical, based upon your studies and your working rules of the evidence would indicate that there is racial polarization in elections for Charleston County Council?
A: There are racial difference in voting, not racial polarization.
(Weber Dep. at 139-42)
The hypothetical was Plaintiffs attorney's attempt to separate the element of causation from Dr. Weber's conclusions regarding the third precondition. As stated, Dr. Weber believes that the stratification of white and black voters in Charleston County is a consequence of partisan differences as opposed to racial differences and he repeatedly insisted on this conclusion notwithstanding Plaintiffs attorney's attempt to focus the inquiry, as is consistent with the law regarding the third precondition, on the issue of polarization regardless of cause. The hypothetical simply forced Dr. Weber to concede, regardless of his personal interpretation of the law, that the preconditions of Gingles were satisfied on the facts of this case and that the totality of the circumstances inquiry was all that remained. Not only was the Magistrate Judge correct in his interpretation of Dr. Weber's answers, but Plaintiffs attorney acted properly in pursuing the line of questions as he did.
V. Objections as to Plaintiffs' burden of proof
Finally, Defendants make a series of objections in regards to Plaintiff's alleged failure to satisfy their burden of proof as to the third Gingles precondition. While the Court finds that Dr. Weber's express concession eliminates any issue of fact as to the third precondition, (as all experts therefore agree it has been satisfied), out of an abundance of caution, the Court makes the following additional remarks in response.
First, Defendants proffer what the Court would characterize as rather anecdotal, deposition testimony of candidates who testify to being minority-preferred candidates. (See Def.s' Obj. at 10-13). The Court finds such evidence to be generally unpersuasive. Even assuming, as the Court must, that such perceptions were true, "minority-preferred candidate" means something more quantitative than simply what an individual candidate may or may not perceive about him or herself in regards to the preferences of voters. Rather, the Court will focus on the weight of the statistical data presented in Dr. Weber's and Dr. Arrington's respective reports regarding the electoral success, failure, and classification of minority-preferred candidates.
Next, Defendants contend that Plaintiffs, in contradiction of the Fourth Circuit decision in Lewis v. Alamance County, 99 F.3d 600 (4th Cir. 1996), "excluded 30 years of primary elections from its analysis, including those in which the minority-preferred candidate won and those in which he or she did not, and [that] the Magistrate disregarded such overwhelming evidence altogether." (Def.s' Obj. at 13). It is true that Lewis clearly warns, "results in these two phases [primary and general] of the single election cycles must be separately considered and analyzed." Lewis, 99 F.3d at 616. However, the express purpose of such inquiry is to avoid the risk of "masking regular defeat in one of these phases with repeated successes in the other, and thereby misperceiving a process that is palpably in violation of the Voting Rights Act, as not violative of the Act at all." Id. To illustrate, the Fourth Circuit stated:
an at-large voting method under which the candidates preferred by the minority community are always successful in the primary election but, because of white bloc voting, are always defeated in the general election . . ., is a voting method under which minorities are, because of white bloc voting, always unsuccessful in attaining elective office.
Id.
The Fourth Circuit reasoned that "[b]y aggregating primary and general elections . . . a court would ineluctably find in both circumstances that minority-preferred candidates were successful fifty percent of the time, and therefore not `usually' defeated by white bloc voting." Id. Ironically, that is precisely the conclusion that Defendants' ask the Court to make in the instant case. Notwithstanding their own expert's conclusion that minority preferred candidates lose in general elections to a legally significant degree, Defendants would have the Court consider success of minority preferred candidates in primary elections as evidence that racial polarization does not occur. This is precisely the type of aggregation of evidence of which the Fourth Circuit warned and in which the Court will not participate. To do otherwise and weigh primary success more heavily in the Court's calculus, would improperly dilute the experts' statistically-derived conclusion that regardless of primary successes in Charleston County, minority-preferred candidates continue to experience legally significant defeat in general elections. (See, e.g., Weber Report at 53-54). Although the Court is unpersuaded to change its conclusion, it should be noted that the expert Reports include data regarding primary elections which the Court has thoroughly considered.
Defendants also strangely contend that the "effective result of ignoring a thirty year history of electoral success by minority-preferred candidates was to assumes [sic] that the only candidates who can be labeled `minority-preferred candidates' are members of the minority, and to indulge in racial stereotyping that tramples on the principles embodied in the Equal Protection Clause." (Def.s' Obj. at 13). To begin, even if thirty years of electoral success had been ignored, it does not necessarily follow that Plaintiffs' or the Magistrate therefore assumed that "only candidates who can be labeled `minority-preferred candidates' are members of the minority," (id.). Moreover, the allegation is completely unsubstantiated, as the record proffered by Plaintiffs and reviewed by the Magistrate Judge and this Court includes every general election contest for Charleston County Council from 1988 to 2000, as analyzed by Defendants' own expert, regardless of the race of the minority-preferred candidate or the race of his or her opponent. The objection is without merit.
Defendants also contest Plaintiffs alleged reliance on the bivariate ecological regression analysis for the estimation of voter candidate-preferences. Defendants rightly note that the method has been criticized. See Lewis, 99 F.3d 600(1996). The Fourth Circuit in Lewis cautioned against "overreliance on bivariate ecological regression analysis in the estimation of voter preferences . . . [because] [b]ivariate regression analysis . . . only allows one to determine the correlation between the percentage of the vote received by a particular candidate and the racial composition of precincts." Id. at 605 n. 3. The Fourth Circuit concluded that in a sense "the bivariate ecological regression analysis merely assumes that which it is the purpose of the analysis to prove." Id. Notwithstanding the Fourth Circuit's cogent warning, the Supreme Court has previously endorsed both the bivariate ecological regression and the extreme case statistical methods. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 52-61. More important, experts for Plaintiffs and Defendants prudently employed both statistical methodologies. Defendants have not explained how, or even alleged that, conclusions regarding voter preferences are different under the extreme case method as opposed to those reached using bivariate ecological regression. In fact, the Court has reviewed the statistical data produced by each method and finds the results to be consistently within 1-3 percentage points of each other. (Attachment JCR-4). Dr. Weber expressly acknowledges that he used both methods, (Weber Report, dated October 8, 2001, at 12), and yet draws no distinctions in the conclusions drawn from each. Ultimately, to the extent the bivariate ecological regression methodology may have yielded "self-fulfilling" statistical data in this case, the Court's conclusions remain shielded from overreliance upon such deficiencies by the expert's complimentary use of both methods.
VI. Additional findings as to the third Gingles precondition
As stated, Dr. Weber's express concession that the third Gingles precondition has been satisfied eliminates any issue of fact as to the existence of white bloc-voting. However, the Court highlights the following statistical conclusions as clearly satisfying Plaintiffs' burden of proof as to the third Gingles' precondition:
1. As far as polarization in voting between the two groups is concerned, I find that in 25 of the 33 elections, there was evidence of polarization in voting (about 75.8 percent of the elections were polarized) in that non-white voters preferred Democratic candidates, while white voters preferred Republican candidates.
(Weber Report, dated October 8, 2001, at 53).
2. . . . in 78.6 percent of elections where non-white voters acted cohesively, the group was defeated in electing a candidate of choice to the County Council office.
(Id. at 54).
3. . . . white voters were cohesive . . . in 31 of the 33 elections.
(Id. at 42).
"There is no simple doctrinal test for the existence of legally significant racial bloc voting." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 58. The Fourth Circuit has stated that the third Gingles precondition is not satisfied simply by a showing that "the white bloc voting defeats the minority-preferred candidate more often than not." Lewis, 99 F.3d at 606 n. 4. "[S]uffice it to say that [it] mean[s] something more than just 51%." Id. The Fourth Circuit referenced Justice O'Connor's conclusion that a finding of "`usually defeated' should be based on a success rate by minority-preferred candidates that is less than proportional representation, although greater than mere tokenism." Id.
As a guidon, the Supreme Court has stated that "a pattern of racial bloc voting that extends over a period of time is more probative of a claim that a district experiences legally significant polarization than are the results of a single election" and that "the fact that racially polarized voting is not present in one or a few individual elections does not necessarily negate the conclusion that the district experiences legally significant bloc voting." Gingles, 478 U.S. at 57.
In the instant case, the Court finds the statistical data over the most recent 12 year period to be uniformly significant: cohesion in white voting eclipsed 90%; non-white voters were defeated in 78.6% of the elections where they acted cohesively; and elections were polarized in excess of 75% of endogenous, general elections considered. The Court concludes that by any measure these numbers are legally significant. Moreover, Dr. Weber, Defendants' own expert, has admitted that on the basis of these findings, Plaintiffs' "case would continue to be alive to go with the totality of circumstances." (Weber Dep. at 142).
Dr. Weber only argues that these statistics do not "produce a picture of legally significant vote dilution" because they are "attributable to race-neutral causal factors." (Weber Report, dated October 8, 2001, at 54). As stated, however, causation is irrelevant to the inquiry.
Although Defendants now also contest the span of years analyzed as deficiently short, it was their own expert that intentionally limited the elections considered to those most recent, while experts for Plaintiffs considered elections from 1984 to 2000. Defendants' expert purposefully declined to consider pre-1988 elections "because numerous Federal courts have held that recent elections for endogenous offices are the most probative in determining vote dilution. . . ." (Weber Report, dated October 8, 2001, at 9-10). The Court agrees that the most recent elections are most probative. See, e.g., Ruiz v. City of Santa Maria, 160 F.3d 543, 555 (9th Cir. 1998); Uno v. City of Holyoke, 72 F.3d 973, 990 (1st Cir. 1995); Meek v. Metropolitan Dade County, Fla., 985 F.2d 1471, 1482-83 (11th Cir. 1993). In fact the Supreme Court in Gingles affirmed the district court's finding of a Section 2 violation on the strength of only three election cycles. Gingles, 478 U.S. at 52.
The record considers 33 probative, endogenous, general elections. The Court concludes that in a legally significant portion of those elections white bloc-voting was sufficient to defeat the combined efforts of non-white voters and any white crossover votes. Defendants' expert admits no less. Accordingly, Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment as to the third precondition is granted.
CONCLUSION
It is, therefore,
ORDERED, for the foregoing reasons that the Court adopts in whole the Report and Recommendation of the Magistrate Judge and incorporates the Report by specific reference into this Order. It is further ORDERED that Plaintiffs' Motion for Partial Summary Judgment is GRANTED.
AND IT IS SO ORDERED.