district is premised upon a minority group gaining support from voters in the typically Caucasian majority to elect the candidate of the minority group’s choice. In apparent contradiction, the third Gingles precondition requires that the majority population vote “sufficiently as a bloc to enable it. .. usually to defeat the minority’s preferred candidate.” Gingles, 478 U.S. at 51, 92 L. Ed. 2d at 47. Consequently, if the majority group does not vote sufficiently as a bloc, the third Gingles prong cannot be met. When a minority group is able to accumulate sufficient crossover Caucasian votes that the minority candidate is successful, however, the Gingles premise that the Caucasian majority votes as a bloc to defeat the minority group’s candidate is undermined. Metts, 363 F.3d at 12 (<HOLDING>). In short, a high level of crossover voting is
holding that plaintiffs tennessee voters had a plain direct and adequate interest in maintaining the effectiveness of their votes and therefore had standing to maintain the action recognizing the tension in any effort to satisfy both the first and third prong of gingles and observing that to the extent that africanamerican voters have to rely on crossover voting to prove they have the ability to elect a candidate of their choosing their argument that the majority votes as a bloc against their preferred candidate is undercut recognizing the right of individuals to associate for the advancement of political beliefs and the right of qualified voters regardless of their political persuasion to cast their votes effectively holding that prospective jurors should have been excused for cause because they did not affirmatively state that their bias against the plaintiffs would not affect their ability to render an impartial verdict holding that it was proper for court to rely on affidavits of defendants representatives in negotiations because their personal knowledge and competence to testify are reasonably inferred from their positions and the nature of their participation in the matters to which they swore