UNITED NATIONS FORUM ON MINORITY ISSUES NOVEMBER 12, 2009 JOHN PAYTON The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is the oldest – and have been described as the finest – human rights law firm in American history. We have been involved in virtually all of the modern efforts to effectuate effective political participation by African Americans. For most of U.S. history Black Americans were excluded from political participation. I will describe the means by which that exclusion was achieved and the continuing efforts to counteract those measures. As a preliminary matter, I will describe the election process in the U.S. There is no national election authority or commission in the U.S. Instead, elections are run by our separate states, and, in those states the elections are run by smaller local entities, usually counties. So, there were thousands of different ballots for last November’s election, all processed in different ways. Additionally, in the United States individual candidates run for individual offices. There are political parties, but there are no party lists or proportional representation. Instead, there is a geographically defined district. Some are fixed, as are state wide offices or the President. But most are drawn on a map from time to time. Each of these points – who runs the election, who draws the district, can be affected by discrimination.