Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality

This book provides an up-to-date analysis of American voting rights law and the numerous controversies surrounding minority representation.

Klappentext

With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the right of minorities to register and vote was largely secured. It was soon discovered, however, that minority voting did not guarantee the election of minorities or minority-preferred candidates. Indeed, efforts by states and localities in the second half of the 1960s were aimed at denying any substantial minority representation to go along with the ability to cast ballots. Eventually congressional amendments to the Act along with the Supreme Court opinion in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) have led to efforts to eliminate electoral laws that have the effect of diluting the minority vote, whether or not they were enacted with discriminatory intent. Controversy still surrounds the matter of minority representation, however, because of the ambiguity of certain aspects of the law and because of problems in applying it to the largely single-member district context of the 1990s. This book is the most up-to-date treatment of voting rights law and the numerous controversies surrounding minority representation. The authors have extensive, firsthand experience in both the legal battles and the scholarly examination of these issues. Based on this wealth of experience, they describe the development of the law after 1965, discuss in detail the prevailing Supreme Court interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, and examine discrepancies in federal court interpretations of subsequent actions. They also introduce the reader to technical procedures for establishing standards of representation and measuring discrimination. In the final two chapters, they consider the application of voting rights law to districting in the 1990s along with the implicationsof recent developments for the future of representation in America.

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. The right to vote and the right to representation; 2. The evolution of a vote dilution standard through 1986; 3. The vote dilution standard in the post-Gingles era: clarifications and complications in the lower courts; 4. Defining and measuring racially polarized voting and other elements of the totality of the circumstances; 5. Vote dillution in single-memberdistricts and other issues of the 1990s; 6. The voting rights act and the realistic politics of second best: an optimistic look to the future; Index.