Columbia University New York, N.Y. 10027 Office of Public Information (212) 854-5573
Special voting districts created to increase minority representation in Congress do not achieve their goals outside the South and do so inefficiently within the South, a Columbia University study has found.
Political scientists Charles Cameron, David Epstein and Sharyn O'Halloran have found that federal rules requiring that minority voters constitute a majority in such districts can diminish minority influence in Congress rather than strengthen it. Such a result is possible, they find, because increases in minority voter registrations in one special district may be more than offset by losses in surrounding districts from which minority voters are taken.
The U. S. Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on the constitutionality of special Congressional districts in Louisiana and Georgia.
The researchers, who created a statistical model to assess how well the votes of members of Congress reflect their constituents' desires, say the redistricting plans dilute minority voting strength because the Justice Department arbitrarily requires minority districts to have as many as 65 percent minority voters. Their paper, published by the Center for the Social Sciences at Columbia, asks: "Do majority-minority districts maximize black representation in Congress?" Is it better, they ask, for minorities to wield a modest amount of influence in many districts, or substantial influence in only a few? Do minority voters influence the votes of non-minority representatives, or must minority members of Congress be elected to advance minority interests?
The answer differs by region. Outside the South, where Democrats generally support minority positions, distributing minorities evenly across districts would maximize representation of the minority agenda, according to Professor Epstein, though the Justice Department has never sought such a remedy. Special districts harm that agenda by concentrating minority voters and allowing districts adjoining the special districts to elect Republicans. As many as five Congressional districts changed from Democratic to Republican hands in the 1994 midterm elections because of special districting, Professor Epstein estimates.
In the South, the gap between black and non-black Democrats on minority issues is far greater than elsewhere, so race-neutral schemes do not work as well, and minority districts are more effective.
But if they had to select one districting strategy for the nation as a whole, the authors would abandon minority voting districts. "In the face of a national Republican tide, optimal districting schemes will concentrate minority voters less, rather than more," the authors conclude. Although such a strategy also slightly increases the number of southern Republicans elected, it promises minorities the greatest possible substantive representation in Congress, the authors say, without regard to the race of the representatives elected.
Current districting schemes in the South concentrate minorities too heavily, resulting in "over-gerrymandering," Professor Epstein said. Spreading minorities into districts with as few as 45 to 47 percent minority voters would allow even greater representation than now, the authors say. Minority candidates have a substantial chance of being elected from districts with fewer than 50 percent minority voters, they write. Southern districts with as little as 40 percent black voting-age population have a 50-50 chance of electing a black representative, they find.
To answer the question of which scheme best serves minority representation, the political scientists developed a methodology that analyzed roll call votes by every member of the 103rd Congress, relating them to minority constituents' interests as measured by two voting indexes. They were the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights index, compiled from 14 votes considered important to minority interests, including motor voter registration, gun control and gays in the military, and a modified Congressional Quarterly index of 27 key votes for the 103rd Congress.
The authors also coded representatives by race and political party, into the categories Republican, Black Democrat or Non-Black Democrat. (The 103rd Congress had 38 black members, of whom all but one were Democrats.) They then examined the relation between a legislator's voting and patterns of the percentage of minority voters in their district. This allowed the Columbia researchers to calculate the districting strategies that maximize votes in favor of minority-sponsored legislation.
Importantly, said Professor Epstein, these strategies are different from strategies that would maximize the number of minority representatives. The authors single out Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina as states whose current district boundaries under-represent minority interests.
In the case argued before the Supreme Court this year, U.S. v. Hays, the plaintiffs assert that districts drawn to insure that minority voters are a majority violate the rights of non-minority voters under the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause. They argue that the government must treat citizens as individuals, not as members of a racial or sexual class. Civil rights groups say the Supreme Court has in the past allowed the use of race as a factor in drawing electoral districts, so long as it is not done for the sole purpose of segregating voters.
Before states were compelled by the Voting Rights Act to construct such districts, no Southern state had sent a black to Congress since 1901. The first black representatives from majority-minority districts were both elected in 1972: Barbara Jordan from Texas and Andrew Young from Georgia.
The Act, signed into law 30 years ago on Aug. 5, 1965 and strengthened in 1975 and again in 1982, provides that racial minorities shall not have "less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice."
The question of whether minority voting districts might be unconstitutional was first raised by the Supreme Court in 1993, when in Shaw v. Reno it ruled that North Carolina's 12th Congressional District--which snakes 160 miles along Interstate 85--had a bizarre shape and might create an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The court remanded the case to a federal district court, which upheld the district on the basis that it united urban interests as well as racial minorities.
Professors Cameron and Epstein are assistant professors of political science at Columbia. Professor O'Halloran is assistant professor of international and public affairs at the University.
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