About 40 years ago, while working for a local newspaper, I wrote a column questioning why the local supervisor of elections used skin color as one of the demographics of the electorate.

It was unnecessary then and it is even less needed today.

Yet, skin color is at the heart of a federal court lawsuit that required the City Council to rewrite the maps of the council districts.

The judge said the original districts were “racially segregated.”

Not only was that untrue, it also didn’t matter.

The council was not ordering people to live in the homes they had chosen. That’s what segregation is, and it was practiced in areas ruled by Democrats for years until outlawed.

But the residents of Jacksonville have chosen where to live. Many people obviously choose to live in neighborhoods where most residents have the same color skin.

And since one of requirements of drawing a council district is that it be compact, and the city is carved into 14 districts, it is exceedingly difficult to draw districts that have an even number of people with black and white skin. Other skin colors, for some reason, are not even considered.

Voters are voters. Each one has a different set of beliefs.

So the constant claim that people with black skin can’t vote for the person of their choice because of what district they are in continues to be a mystery.

The claim is made in lawsuits and echoed in the Democrat media as if it were gospel.

Americans can hope that one of the lawsuits – perhaps the one in Jacksonville – will reach the U.S. Supreme Court and a majority will say: This is nonsense.

Let people live where they want. Let them vote for whoever they want. Stop trying to divide them by race and ethnicity and every other way possible.

Treat everyone the same. That is the opposite of discrimination and one of the basic principles of American life.