University of Massachusetts Boston ScholarWorks at UMass Boston Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy Publications 7-2007 The otV ing Rights Act and the Election of Nonwhite Officials Pei-te Lien University of Utah Dianne M. Pinderhughes University of Notre Dame Carol Hardy-Fanta University of Massachusetts Boston Christine M. Sierra University of New Mexico - Main Campus Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.umb.edu/cwppp_pubs Part of the American Politics Commons, Economic Policy Commons, Health Policy Commons, Other Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Public Policy Commons, Race and Ethnicity Commons, Social Policy Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Lien, Pei-te, Dianne M. Pinderhughes, Carol Hardy-Fanta, and Christine Marie Sierra. 2007. "The otV ing Rights Act and the Election of Nonwhite Officials." PS: Political Science & Politics 40(3): 489-94. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy Publications by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FEATURES The Voting Rights Act and the Election of Nonwhite Officials Pei-te Lien, University of Utah Dianne M. Pinderhughes, University of Notre Dame Carol Hardy-Fanta, University of Massachusetts, Boston Christine M. Sierra, University of New Mexico he Voting Rights Act ~VRA! is one of of communities of color by examining but in deterring numerous changes in- T the most important—if not the most the implications of majority-minority tended to abridge minorities’ rights to important—public policies developed districts and other key provisions in the political participation and representation. over the last half century to increase ac- VRA for the election of nonwhite offi- In 1975, the Mexican American Legal cess to the U.S. political system for peo- cials in the beginning years of the Defense and Education Fund and other ple of color. The VRA also provides an twenty-first century. Latino organizations lobbied the Justice important context for understanding the Department, the Leadership Conference ascension of nonwhite groups into the A Brief History of the VRA on Civil Rights, and other organizations elected leadership of the nation ~Brown- in the civil rights coalition to support the ing, Marshall, and Tabb 1984; Davidson The VRA, as first passed in 1965, extension and expansion of the VRA. and Grofman 1994; Menifield 2001; Mc- applied specifically to African Ameri- They succeeded in bringing all Latinos Clain and Stewart 2002; Segura and cans because of the long history of ra- who were monolingual in Spanish under Bowler 2005; Bositis 2006!. This essay cial discrimination that was coverage, based on their status as lan- assesses the present-day significance of acknowledged by the U.S. Congress. guage minorities ~Pinderhughes 1995!. the VRA for the political representation Jurisdictions that met certain criteria, The minority language provisions—Sec- based on the proportion of the popula- tions 203 ~for written languages! and tion registered to vote and on evidence 4~f!4 ~for unwritten or oral language!— of barriers to registration and voting, precipitated coverage for American Indi- Pei-te Lien is associate professor of politi- were designated “covered jurisdictions”; ans, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, cal science and ethnic studies at the Univer- if they met the terms specified by Sec- and Latinos and were renewed in 1982 sity of Utah. Her research interests center tion 4 of the VRA, these jurisdictions for 10 years and in 1992 for 15 years. on the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, were consequently subject to federal Pushed by Asian American and other and nativity in political behavior. She can intervention and oversight in their elec- civil rights organizations, the effort not be reached by email at peite.lien@gmail. com. toral process. Section 2 is a key perma- only extended Section 203 to 2007, but nent provision that prohibits the use of expanded bilingual voting assistance to Dianne M. Pinderhughes is professor any voting procedure or practice that jurisdictions with 10,000 or more single- and President’s Distinguished Professor of may result in a denial or abridgement of language minorities in the population Political Science and African Studies at the the right to vote on account of race or ~National Asian Pacific American Legal University of Notre Dame. Her areas of ex- color. Section 5 ~the preclearance provi- Consortium 1997!. In 2006, Sections 203 pertise include race, ethnicity, urban poli- sion!, a temporary provision that re- and 4~f!4 were also extended, the former tics, and minority voting rights. She is the quires covered jurisdictions to obtain for 25 years. incoming president of the APSA, 2007– prior approval from federal authorities Minority vote dilution, recognized as a 2008. for any proposed changes in their voting constraint on the abilities of racial minor- Carol Hardy-Fanta is director of the laws or procedures, has been renewed ities to elect representatives of their own, Center for Women in Politics & Public Pol- three times by Congress, in 1970, 1975, was addressed and acknowledged in the icy, John W. McCormack Institute of Public and in 1982 when the Act was extended 1982 amendment. The Supreme Court Affairs, University of Massachusetts-Boston. for 25 years until August 2007. In July set criteria for implementation of protec- She authored the widely-acclaimed Latina 2006, the Congress renewed this provi- tions against minority vote dilution in Politics, Latino Politics. Her email address is sion a fourth time and extended it for Thornburg v. Gingles, permitting the [email protected]. 25 more years, until 2031, in the “Fan- creation of so-called majority-minority nie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta districts in 1986. By 1990, the conflu- Christine M. Sierra is professor of polit- Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthori- ence of racially segregated housing pat- ical science at the University of New Mex- ico. Her primary research interest is on zation and Amendments Act of 2006” terns, the rapid rise of the nonwhite immigration, race, ethnicity, and Chicano/ ~H.R. 9!. A recent report from the Na- population due to international migra- Chicana politics. She is the lead PI of the tional Commission on the Voting Rights tion, the constitutional recognition of Gender and Multicultural Leadership project Act ~2006! maintains that Section 5 has majority-minority districts, and the new (www.gmcl.org). been effective not only in intercepting capacity of civil rights litigators to use PSOnline www.apsanet.org DOI: 10.1017/S1049096507070746 489 computer software to design districts led District information for the 109th single-race statistics are available in this to the creation of a significant number of Congress comes from the U.S. Census Census product. new electoral districts in the U.S. House 2000.3 We used the “Race alone or in of Representatives and in state and local combination” and “Hispanic or Latinos VRA and Racial legislative bodies ~Parker 1990; Swain and Race” categories to compile the ra- Representation in the 1995; Lublin 1997; Grofman 1998; cial makeup of each district. The data- House of Representatives Canon 1999; Tate 2003!. While this con- base also includes racial identification cept began to be challenged in Shaw v. information on the nation’s state legisla- Despite the continuing increase of Reno, involving a 1992 North Carolina tors of color, updated with the 2006 di- nonwhite elected officials in recent de- redistricting case, the creation of rectory information provided by the cades, nonwhites are still severely under- majority-minority districts set the stage National Conference of State Legislators. represented in Congress. Although for a substantial expansion in the num- The VRA coverage information for each nonwhites were 31% of the national pop- bers of Black and Latino elected officials congressional district is taken from a ulation in 2000, they were less than 12% in the early 1990s. A preliminary look “VRA Impact Congressional Jurisdiction of the House members. As shown in the into the nation’s nonwhite elected offi- Database”; that for sub-national levels of top three rows of Table 1, there are a cials in recent decades suggests that the office is taken from the “VRA Impact total of 71 nonwhite House members in trend of growth has slowed but contin- Local Jurisdiction Database.”4 the 109th Congress; 20, or 28%, of them ued, especially at the local level and Given our interest in descriptive racial are women. African Americans lead the among women ~Hardy-Fanta et al. 2005, representation, we include in our analysis way with 41 members, followed by Lati- forthcoming; Bositis 2006; Smooth the racial breakdown for each state legis- nos with 25 members. There are also 2006!. lative district, using demographic infor- four Asian Americans and one American mation for all ages ~not just 18 and Indian member. The racial parity ratios 5 Data and Method over! from the Census 2000 Redistrict- in the House ~calculated as the percent- ing Dataset.6 For Asians, we combine age share of the legislative body divided To assess the continuing significance figures for Asians and Pacific