Richard L. Engstrom

The Election of Blacks to City Councils: Clarifying the Impact of Electoral Arrangements on the Seats/Population Relationship

The notion that at-large elections for city council seats are discriminatory toward blacks has recently been attacked as empirically invalid. Recent studies have reached conflicting conclusions as to whether electoral arrangements or socioeconomic factors are the major influence on how proportionately blacks are represented. This article addresses this issue, using a regression-based analysis in which proportionality is treated as a relationship across cities with electoral structure as a specifying variable. Socioeconomic variables found to be important in other studies are included. The results support the traditional notion and suggest that the electoral structure begins to have a discernible impact on the level of black representation once the black population reaches 10 percent of the total municipal population. While one socioeconomic variable, the relative income of the citys black population, is found to affect the election of blacks, its impact is greater than that of the electoral structure only when the black population is less than 15 percent.

The Underrepresentation of Blacks on City Councils: Comparing the Structural and Socioeconomic Explanations for South/Non-South Differences

The more extensive use of at-large elections and the greater disparity in politically relevant socioeconomic resources each have been cited as the primary reason why blacks are underrepresented more severely on city councils in the South than on those outside the South. These two explanations for the regional difference in black councilmanic representation are compared through a design which treats electoral arrangements and resource disparities as specifying variables affecting the rate at which minority votes convert into minority council members. The findings show that the more severe underrepresentation in the South is explained best by the differences in electoral arrangements.

Cumulative Voting in a Municipal Election: a Note on Voter Reactions and Electoral Consequences

C UMULATIVE voting was used to elect members of a local governing body in the United States for the first time this century when, in July of 1987, The City of Alamogordo, New Mexico employed that voting system to elect part of its city council. This was the first use of the system in any public election in this country since the State of Illinois, in 1980, adopted a single-member districting arrangement to elect the lower chamber of its state legislature, thereby abandoning the system of cumulative voting within three-member districts it had been using for over 100 years.2 Rules permitting cumulative voting may be employed in conjunction with any multimember district. If voters in such a district are provided with more than one vote, cumulative voting allows them to aggregate or cumulate their votes behind a particular candidate or candidates if they wish. For example, in a three-seat, three-vote situation, voters have the option of casting their votes in the traditional manner, giving each of three different candidates one of their votes, or they may cast two votes for one candidate and one for another, or even cast all three votes for one candidate. Cumulative voting, in short, allows voters to do more than choose among candidates, it allows them to express the intensity of their preferences as well (see generally Lakeman 1974: 87-90).

Spatial Distribution of Partisan Support and the Seats/Votes Relationship

How a partys votes are converted into legislative seats in a territorial districtplurality election system is partly a function of the spatial distribution of that partys electoral support. To assess the impact of residential patterns on the seats/votes relationship, fifty elections were simulated in which party strength and dispersion varied. In each simulation the same unbiased districting plan was utilized. After accounting for the impact of party strength on the number of seats won, over half of the remaining variance was explained by geographical distribution. Both the strength of the adjusted r2 and the model employed highlight the importance of keeping vote dilution attributable to residential patterns conceptually distinct from dilution attributable to the placement of district boundaries, a distinction to which empirical measures of gerrymandering should be sensitive.

‘Enhancing’ factors in at-large plurality and majority systems: A reconsideration

Abstract There are important variations in the plurality and majority at-large electoral systems used in cities in the United States. Some of these variations are thought to enhance the ability of a white majority to control electoral outcomes, thereby reducing the likelihood that blacks will be elected to city councils. The presence of these ‘enhancing factors’, however, is not found to account for variations in the degree of black under-representation on city councils of large cities employing the at-large format. Indeed, under specific conditions, one particular enhancing factor—staggered elections in a plurality context—may have consequences quite contrary to conventional expectations.

The Political Scientist as Expert Witness

Political nesses desegregation, sanctions training: on scientists elections, many for hiring topics political serve same-sex undocumented related in courtrooms asylum marriages, to their requests, aliens, as professional expert employer school propwitnesses on many topics related to their professional training: elections, same-sex marriages, employer sanctions for hiring undocumented aliens, school desegregat on, p litical a ylum requ ts, pro erty rights, and racial profiling, among many others. It is not by chance that wethe authorshave chosen to testify as experts in cases concerning elections (see also Cain 1999). Electionrelated cases compose a large percentage of all cases involving political scientists brought to court: a study of references to expert testimony by political scientists in published federal district court decisions from 1950 through 1989 reports that 61% involved election law issues (Leigh 1991) . Our replication of this study for the period of 2000 through December 18, 2010, reveals that 74% of such cases (28 of 38) involved election law issues.1 These cases involved issues of minority vote dilution, redistricting, alternative election systems (cumulative and limited voting) , campaign financing, voting equipment and invalid ballots, voter registration, nominating petition requirements, and a number of other issues.2 Our political science expertise is particularly relevant to issues of how political competition is or should be structured and how election structures interact with the behavior of voters to affect election outcomes and other facets of the electoral

Affirmative Action and the Politics of Race

In June 1997, Bill Clinton announced that he intended to use his presidential office to lead the United States in “a great and unprecedented conversation about race.” Clinton recognized that it would be a conversation in which “emotions may be rubbed raw,” but said that it was necessary because racial discrimination remained “the greatest challenge” his country faced.

Cincinnati's 1988 proportional representation initiative

Abstract In a referendum the voters of Cincinnati rejected by 55 per cent to 45 per cent a proposal to adopt the single transferable vote system for electing the Cincinnati city council. STV had been in use in Cincinnati from 1925 until 1957 and it was the first effort to bring it back.

The Voting Rights Act: Disfranchisement, Dilution, and Alternative Election Systems

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) (79 Stat. 667) is widely regarded as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation enacted in the United States. Adopted initially in 1965 to protect the voting rights of African Americans, it was expanded in 1975 to protect the voting rights of specified language minorities: Hispanice, Native Americans, Native Alaskans, and Asian Americans. A number of important changes in American politics can be traced directly to the VRA. The first is the dramatic increase in the number of minority voters. The major barriers to minority group members registering to vote and casting ballots have been removed as a result of the Act; consequently, minority disfranchisement is only rarely an issue today. The expansion of the minority electorate was critical to another important change, the increase in the number of minority elected officials. Minority voter support has usually been essential to the electoral success of minority candidates. Growth in the minority electorate in the United States was followed by an increase in minority officeholders. The magnitude of this increase, however, has been dependent on additional VRA provisions.

Shelby County v. Holder and the gutting of federal preclearance of election law changes

The preclearance provision of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was rendered ineffective by the United States Supreme Court in 2013 in Shelby County, AL v. Holder. This provision required federal review of changes in the election policies and practices of state and local governments with particularly bad histories of racial discrimination in their electoral processes. This essay identifies the crucial prophylactic role the provision played in preventing the implementation of vote denial and vote dilution practices in southern states. It provides an overview of the various reauthorizations of the provision, with particular attention to the latest in 2006, and a critical review of the Supreme Courts response to it. Special attention is devoted to the social science evidence relied upon by Congress in that reauthorization and by the Court in its response to it.