At‐Large Elections and Minority Representation in Local Government

Abstract

Despite a long history of legal challenges alleging that elections conducted at‐large suppress minority representation, this remains the dominant electoral system in local governments throughout the United States. Moreover, a large empirical literature remains divided over the present‐day impact of at‐large elections on the political success of underrepresented groups. We reconcile the competing findings in this literature by providing contingent, causal estimates of the effect of conversion from at‐large to ward elections on minority officeholding, using a novel identification strategy afforded by the California Voting Rights Act of 2001. We find a dramatic positive effect of conversion in districts where Latinos constitute a sufficiently large share of the voting population, and in large and residentially segregated districts. When these conditions are not satisfied, we consistently see null estimated effects.

The use of differential privacy for census data and its impact on redistricting: The case of the 2020 U.S. Census

“…We estimate how many MMDs the move to a district system would create in this case, based on imputations of individual race and ethnicity using either the DAS-12.2 or the Census 2010 data. The move from at-large elections to district systems has been shown to improve representation for minority candidates in local elections with high residential segregation, like the ERCSD ( 51 ).…”

Campaign finance vouchers do not reduce donor inequality

“…While some of these attributes found within Seattle's voucher year elections have been discussed within past research in areas without vouchers (e.g. Abott and Magazinnik, 2020, Gulzar et al, 2020, Malhotra, 2008, Trounstine and Valdini, 2008, an examination of whether vouchers are causally responsible for these attributes, as well as further study on the electoral consequences of these attributes provide directions for future work on campaign finance in local elections.…”

How Does Minority Political Representation Affect School District Administration and Student Outcomes?

“…There are many potential confounds between the demographics of school board members, policy, and student outcomes. As one example of how policy changes can affect racial representation, Abott and Magazinnik (2020) show that the California Voting Rights Act, which led to many school districts adopting ward-based elections, increased Latino representation in highly segregated districts. The possibility of confounding is a major validity threat for much of the existing literature, as it is largely limited to examining cross-sectional variation in the proportion of minorities on school boards.…”