This June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a decision that could have important impacts on the rights and representation of minorities. Using new research, Paru Shah, Melissa Marschall and Anirudh Ruhil find that the number of cities covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act with at least one African-American city council member increased by 82 percent between 1981 and 2001. They also argue that coverage by the Voting Rights Act seems to amplify the effects of minority voting strength, council size, and electoral structures in cities

Marschall, Melissa

Ruhil, Anirudh

Shah, Paru

LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2013/10/11/black-representation-voting-rights-act/The Voting Rights Act has been instrumental in ensuring gainsin black representation in cities over the last three decades.This June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a decisionthat could have important impacts on the rights and representation of minorities. Using newresearch, Paru Shah, Melissa Marschall  and Anirudh Ruhil find that the number of citiescovered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act with at least one African-American city councilmember increased by 82 percent between 1981 and 2001. They also argue that coverage by theVoting Rights Act seems to amplify the effects of minority voting strength, council size, andelectoral structures in cities.Given that blacks were historically excluded from officeholding, it is generally thought that byremoving barriers to voter participation and candidacy, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) wouldhave its most significant effect on increasing not only black voter participation but also blackcandidates’ access and ascension to elected office. At the same time, the conditions that led tothe passage of the VRA – voter discrimination and intimidation, vote dilution, as well asrestrictions on educational and employment advancement for blacks – meant places covered bythe VRA’s Section 5 had considerable ground to make up. Section 5 prohibits election practicesor procedures in states with a history of discriminatory voting practices until these newprocedures have been subjected either to an administrative review by the United States AttorneyGeneral, or after a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.Anecdotally, some have argued that we have achieved the goal of increased representation. Inhis critique of the continued value of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, Chief Justice Robertsnoted that many of the same cities witness to the violence during the civil rights movement arenow governed by African-American mayors, and concluded that “there is no denying that, due to the Voting RightsAct, our nation has made great strides.” It is certainly true that over the past several decades racial and ethnicminorities have secured elected office at all levels of government: between 1972 and 2000 the total number ofblack elected officials in the United States increased by roughly 300 percent, from 2,264 to 9,040, as illustrated inFigure 1 below.Figure 1 – Black Representation on City Councils and School Boards (1973-2000)Missing, however, from the arguments surrounding the reauthorization debate was an examination of the VRA’srole (as opposed to that of changing racial attitudes or black population growth) in ensuring black candidates winelected office. Our research is one of the first to take a “big picture” look at a large sample of city councils overtime to see where African-Americans are making gains, where they are adding or losing seats and whether theyhave ever been elected in the first place.How could VRA coverage impact the likelihood of black representation? On the one hand, Section 5 coveragecould indirectly thwart attempts of voter dilution by limiting the ability of cities to change their voting rules fromthose that relied on compact electoral districts to those that required candidates to compete city-wide. Thus, inensuring a cohesive minority-voting block, the VRA could help ensure that the conditions encourage minorityresidents to seek and win local elected offices were in place, thereby increasing minority representation.On the other hand, the VRA could operate directly on black gains in representation by changing the nature of theplaces covered. For example, an explicit goal of the civil rights movement centered on black enfranchisement andpolitical participation in the South, particularly in those states eventually covered by the VRA. Civil rights groupsworked relentlessly to register, mobilize and empower black voters throughout this period. This activistinfrastructure and the fact that blacks in the South were politically motivated and increasingly activated, meansthat voters in covered places would more effectively translate their votes into elected seats.  We argue that similarcontextual effects influence the ways in which governing institutions, black resources, and white voters matter inSection 5 covered jurisdictions.To explore the questions of where, when and how the VRA contributed to gains in black representation, weconstructed a dataset spanning 25 years (1981-2006) of cities across the United States. Examining blackrepresentation on city councils, our analysis focused on two questions: first, how did VRA coverage impact thelikelihood of any black representation on a city council, and second, how did VRA coverage impact the totalnumber of black council members elected to office?We found that the VRA continues to be a significant force in ensuring gains in black representation. First, most ofthe gains in black representation occurred in covered jurisdictions. As Figure 1 illustrates, between 1981 and2001, the number of cities covered by Section 5 of the VRA with at least one African-American city councilScenes from a rally in front of the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act. ~ Washington, DCFebruary, 2013~ Photo by David Sachs / SEIU (Creative Commons BY NC SA)member increased from 552 to1,004 – an 82 percent change.The number of cities not coveredthat had at least one African-American city council memberincreased just 3.3 percent – from732 to 756.Figure 2 – Number of citieswith black councilors by VRAcoverage 1981 – 2001Figure 3, below, clearly demonstrates that population size matters. Black representation is more likely in placeswith majority (greater than 50%) black populations, regardless of VRA coverage. However, the rate of growth inrepresentation was greater in covered cities with more average (10-30%) black populations. We also found thatcoverage did indeed change the nature of the cities. Specifically, coverage seems to amplify the effects of minorityvoting strength, council size, and electoral structures. Thus, whereas other research has also demonstrated thateach of these factors is important for minorities seeking elected seats, our findings suggest the coverage reducesthe challenges posed by smaller black voting populations, smaller legislative councils and at-large or mixedelectoral systems.Figure 3 – Distribution of Black Councilors by year, Section 5 coverage, and percentage of Black votingage population (VAP)Note: Total number of black councilors is displayed by percentage of the city’s blackvoting age population (VAP) and Section 5 coverage. Data comes from the Joint Center forPolitical and Economic Studies Roster of Black Elected Officials and thus constitutes thefull population of places in the U.S. with black representation on city councils for anyparticular year.We also found important over-time effects of the Voting Rights Act. In particular, we find that the size of the blackpopulation required to get over the “hurdle” of no representation went down. In other words, covered cities withaverage black populations had a better chance of gaining representation. Moreover, few uncovered cities havemoved beyond electing a single black city councilor, suggesting the VRA was also instrumental in movingAmerican cities beyond a single token minority representative to true political incorporation and decision-making.Together, these findings suggest that we have made remarkable strides towards representational equality thanksto the Voting Rights Act, and that voting protections for minorities are still important. While many of the earliertactics of disenfranchisement and dilution no longer work, minority voters continue to face significant obstacles atthe voting booth. Earlier this year, the day after Supreme Court effectively struck down the “heart of the VotingRights Act of 1965” by a 5-to-4 vote, dismantling the Section 4 provision that required states (mostly in the South)to obtain federal clearance to change their election laws, Texas immediately adopted a voter ID law that manysaw as targeting minority voters. The US Department of Justice is currently suing North Carolina for what it seesas tough new laws that impose restrictions on minority voters. Florida is once more looking to ask minorities toprove citizenship before they are allowed to vote. These are but the earliest examples of how loss of Section 4may impact minority rights, and further evidence that we are far from achieving all the promises of the VotingRights Act.This article is based on ‘Are We There Yet? The Voting Rights Act and Black Representation on City Councils,1981–2006’ in the October edition of The Journal of Politics.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USApp– American Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/19E2EMV_________________________________________About the author  Paru Shah – University of Wisconsin, MilwaukeeParu Shah is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Her researchcenters on American politics, with an emphasis on race, ethnicity and politics, urban politics, andpublic policy analysis._Melissa Marschall – Rice UniversityMelissa Marschall is the Albert Thomas Associate Professor at Rice University, Houston, Texas.Her research focuses on immigrant and minority incorporation, education policy, race andrepresentation, and political behavior._Anirudh Ruhil – Ohio UniversityAnirudh Ruhil is an Associate Professor at Ohio University and the Associate Director ofResearch and Graduate Programs. He has published widely on issues of race and representationin local America, state politics and policy and education policy.CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 2014 LSE USAPP

The voting rights act has been instrumental in ensuring gains in black representation in cities over the last three decades

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