Government Department Cornell University 214 White Hail Ithaca, New York 14853-7901 College of Arts and Sciences t. 607.255.3549 f. 607.255.4530 [email protected] falcon.arts.cornell.edu/Govt 308 White Hall Cornell University Ithaca NY 14853 garcia.riosScornell.edu September 6, 2017 Anthony M. Cerreto Village Attorney Village of Port Chester 222 Grace Church Street Port Chester, NY 10753 Email: tcerretoOportchesterny. com Dear Mr. Cerreto, Please find our response to the Request For Qualifications (RFQ) in response to Village of Port Chester RFQ #2017-02 Alternative Governance Options for Consideration in Future Village Trustee Elections. We are a group of political scientists with current affiliation at U.S. research universities who have expertise and experience in the ability to collect, ana lyze, and interpret vote records and election results; work with U.S. Census data; analyze racial and ethnic voting patterns; develop and make recommen dations for policy and local election systems. We have worked on redistricting research both as consultants and expert witnesses to asses polarized voting and to draw districts in Washington State, California, Texas, and Florida. We have worked on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants so we appreciate and understand both sides of the VRA issues, Our extensive research experience and consulting expertise ensure we are well positioned to evaluate the current system of cumulative voting instituted by the consent decree in 2009 and provide insight into what, if any, governance options would be better suited for the Village of Port Chester while still ensuring compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This team is lead by Dr. Matt Barreto, professor of Political Science and Chicana/o studies at UCLA. Dr. Barreto's research examines the political participation of racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. He has published 57 academic articles and book chapters on the topics of race, eth nicity and politics and his work has received over 2,250 citations according to Google Scholar. At the University of Washington, Dr. Barreto taught a course on the Voting Rights Acts in the Law School. In addition to his Cornell University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action educator and entploycr research on Latino voting patterns, Dr. Barreto has conducted extensive re search on voting rights, and has been an expert witness in numerous Voting Rights Act lawsuits. In 2012, he was qualified as an expert witness in Ro driguez V. Harris County, a Section 2 voting rights lawsuit regarding County Commission redistricting, where he provided a report and testimony on vote dilution and racially polarized voting with respect to Latino candidates and he has testified many times in court about racially polarized voting in a va riety of cases. He also served as an expert witness in the 2012 Pennsylvania voter identification lawsuit Applewhite v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In 2014 Dr. Barreto provided an expert report and testify in Veasey v. Ferry in a challenge to the Texas voter ID law, and a Federal Court struck down the Texas ID law as unconstitutional, in part basing her decision on the ev idence presented by Dr. Barreto. In 2011, Dr. Dr. Barreto was retained as the lead expert consultant for the State of California's Citizen Redistricting Commission, and was specifically asked to advise the Commission on Section 2 and Section 5 of the Federal Voting Rights Act and conduct research on polarized voting and vote dilution. He continues to actively research voting rights in California in Latino, Asian American and immigrant communities. In 2011 Dr. Barreto served as the lead expert on the State of California Citizens Redistricting Commission where he helped the commission ensure compliance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Also included in this team is Dr. Sergio 1. Garcia-Rios, assistant professor of Government and Latino Studies at Cornell University where he teaches courses on race, ethnicity and statistical methods for the social sciences. As a faculty member at Cornell University, Dr. Garcia-Rios is very interested and well equipped to handle questions related to New York state. Dr. Garcia- Rios has served as an expert witness for voting rights cases. His substantive research focuses on Latino participation and voting behavior, in particular examining immigrants and second generation Latinos. Dr. Garcia-Rios's dissertation and book manuscript extensively examines voting behavior and practices among Latinos, with a focus on naturalized immigrants. He has published numerous articles on voting behavior of Latinos. He is also one of the lead developers of eiCompare, an open-source software package to detect, and understand racially polarized voting. He has worked as a research consultant on voting rights cases. Dr. Garcia-Rios along with Dr. Barreto are currently serving as expert witnesses in a voting rights case in the Southern U.S.' Assisting Dr. Barreto and Dr. Garcia-Rios is Bryan Wilcox-Archuleta, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science and M.S. candidate in Statistics at 'Specifics are redacted due to confidentially. UCLA. Mr. Wilcox-Archuleta has assisted on numerous voting rights cases where he analyzed and interpreted election results, voter records, and racially polarized voting in California and Texas with advanced statistical and quan titative methods. Dr. Barreto and Mr. Wilcox-Archuleta recently advised an advocacy group in El Cajon, CA working with the city of El Cajon to help draw new districts that were in the interest of the entire city and made sure all subgroups were well represented. In 2016 and 2017, he was part of a small team of researchers who wrote extensively to determine Latino voting patterns in the 2016 presidential election across numerous states. In 2017 he and Dr. Barreto published an article where they analyzed 39,118 individual voting precincts across 10 states. On these projects, he used his expertise in statistics, big data, voting records, and ecological regression to better under stand individual level voting patterns from aggregate data. As a consultant, he is currently working on two active voting rights cases where he applies his research and statistical skills. He has taken coursework in spatial statistics, machine learning, GIS, and other advanced quantitative methods. Included in this RFQ is a statement of qualifications which contain 1) current Curriculum Vitae for each member of the team. These document all relevant skills, publications, and consulting experience; and 2) Work samples that demonstrate the skills and experience of the team. PLEASE NOTE: The inclusion of work samples is limited since much of the work we have done is protected under attorney client privilege (cases that were settled) or part of ongoing litigation efforts and not yet publicly available. As such, we cannot include the most recent examples of work we have conducted. We included four examples from past settled cases where Dr. Barreto was the lead author. Dr. Sergio Garica-Rios worked as an assistant on these cases. We also include two recent peer reviewed published papers that highlight our competence and experience. Other publications and the discussion of recent work as permitted is available on request. Finally, we include the contact information for two references who are familiar with our work and can comment on our qualifications and experience. Our team is fully capable of performing the work outlined in the RFQ and working closely with the Village of Port Chester, the County of Westchester, and the State of New York to ensure compliance with section 2. We want to ensure that the next governance option in the Village of West Chester ensures a fair and proportional voting system for all residents. Please direct all correspondence to Dr. Sergio Carcia-Rios. Best, ergiol Garcia^Rios, Ph Matt A. Barreto, Ph.D. Bryan Wilcox-Archuleta References Village of Port Chester RFQ #2017-02 Alternative Governance Options for Consideration in Future Village Trustee Elections Reference 1: Chad Dunn, Esq. Brazil and Dunn Attorneys at Law chadQbrazilanddunn.com Tel: (281) 580-6310 Fax: (281) 580-6362 4201 Cypress Creek Pkwy, Suite 530 Houston, Texas 77068 Reference 2: Justin Levitt, JD/MPA. Professor of Law Associate Dean for Research justin.levittOlls.edu Tel: (213) 736-7417 Fax: (213) 380-3769 919 Albany St. Los Angeles, CA 90015 September 2, 2017 Contributed research article eiCompare: Comparing Ecological Inference Estimates across El and ELRxC by Loren Collingwood, Kassra Oskooii, Sergio Garcia-Rios, and Matt Barreto Abstract Social scientists and statisticians often use aggregate data to predict individual-level behavior because the latter are not always available. Various statistical techniques have been developed to make inferences from one level (e.g., precinct) to another level (e.g., individual voter) that minimize errors associated with ecological inference. While ecological inference has been shown to be highly problematic in a wide array of scientific fields, many political scientists and analysis employ the techniques when studying voting patterns. Indeed, federal voting rights lawsuits now require such an analysis, yet expert reports are not consistent in which type of ecological inference is used. This is especially the case in the analysis of racially polarized voting when there are multiple candidates and multiple racial groups. eiCompare was developed to easily assess two of the more common ecological inference methods: the El method developed by King (1997), and the EI:RxC method developed by Rosen et al. (2001); Lau et al. (2006). The package facilitates a seamless comparison between these methods so that scholars and legal practitioners can easily assess the two methods and whether they produce similar or disparate findings. Introduction Ecological inference is a widely debated methodology for attempting to xmderstand individual, or micro behavior from aggregate data. Ecological inference has come under fire for being unreliable, especially in the fields of biological sciences, ecology, epidemiology, public health and many social sciences.