Minority Districts Research Articles

A practical optimization framework for political redistricting: A case study in Arizona

Following the decennial census, each state in the U.S. redraws its congressional and state legislative district boundaries, which must satisfy various legal criteria. For example, Arizona’s Constitution describes six legal criteria, including contiguity, population balance, competitiveness, compactness, and the preservation of communities of interest, political subdivisions and majority–minority districts, each of which is to be enforced “to the extent practicable”. Optimization algorithms are well suited to draw district maps, although existing models and methods have limitations that inhibit their ability to draw legally-valid maps. Adapting existing optimization methods presents two major challenges: the complexity of modeling to achieve multiple and subjective criteria, and the computational intractability when dealing with large redistricting input graphs. In this paper, we present a multi-stage optimization framework tailored to redistricting in Arizona. This framework combines key features from existing methods, such as a multilevel algorithm that reduces graph input sizes and a larger local search neighborhood that encourages faster exploration of the solution space. This framework heuristically optimizes geographical compactness and political competitiveness while ensuring that other criteria in Arizona’s Constitution are satisfied relative to existing norms. Compared to Arizona’s enacted map (CD118) to be used until 2032, the most compact map produced by the algorithm is 41% more compact, and the most competitive map has five more competitive districts. To enable accessibility and to promote future research, we have created Optimap, a publicly accessible tool to interact with a part of this framework. Beyond the creation of these maps, this case study demonstrates the positive impact of adapting optimization-based methodologies for political redistricting in practice.

Constructing an ethnic minority culture-enriched kindergarten curriculum in southwest China: the role of teacher agency

ABSTRACT A policy called ‘ethnic culture into campus’ was set to facilitate cultural transmission via the K-12 schooling in China. To understand how teachers’ agentive roles play out to enact this policy in a certain ethnic minority district in southwest China, this study examined the local voices of city, town, and village kindergarten teachers from a socio-cultural perspective. An ethnographically informed and inductive-interpretative approach was adopted to collect and analyse various types of data. Results showed four perspectives among these teachers: i) explorative and engaging, ii) suggestive and distancing, (iii) spatial and temporal, and (iv) resisting and defying. Also, it was evidenced that only the explorative and engaging agentive perspective could lead to specific strategies in mobilising various cultural resources. Teacher resilience and collective momentum together were found to activate limited yet much needed local efforts and resources to enact the government policy in terms of cultural transmission.

Intersectional Opportunities: Majority Minority Districts and the Descriptive Representation of Latinas and Latinos

Majority minority districts are widely viewed as opportunities for racial minority groups to expand their representation in elected office. Do these districts facilitate the same opportunities for descriptive representation for women and men? I argue that majority minority districts have served as important but distinct opportunities for Latinas and Latinos to get on the ballot. Analyzing pooled data from 57,812 state legislative general elections from the mid-1990s to 2015, and during the first rounds of elections following 2000 and 2010 census-based redistricting, I find support for this view. Key factors often associated with majority minority districts’ capacity as vehicles for minority representation, such as increasingly large Latina/o proportions of district populations and incumbent networks, are more robustly related to the presence of Latinos than Latinas on the ballot. These findings bear directly on our understanding of how majority minority districts fit into a portfolio of institutions for expanding descriptive representation.

Just as electable: Black Democratic candidates in swing districts

ABSTRACT Considerable debate exists in the literature about whether white voters are willing to support Black candidates for office, particularly in electorally competitive, non-majority minority districts. This paper leverages the 2018 congressional election – which saw six Black Democratic candidates win electorally competitive, majority white congressional districts – to contribute to this debate. Controlling for an array of congressional district-specific factors, I find that Black candidates performed no worse than white candidates did in swing seats. These results suggest that worries from party leaders that Black candidates cannot win in majority white swing districts may be overblown.

Minority Success in Non-Majority Minority Districts: Finding the “Sweet Spot”

AbstractThough African-American and Latino electoral success in state legislative and congressional elections continues to occur almost entirely in majority-minority districts, minorities now have new opportunities in districts that are only 40–50% minority. This success can primarily be explained in terms of a curvilinear model that generates a “sweet spot” of maximum likelihood of minority candidate electoral success as a function of minority population share of the district and the proportion of the district that votes Republican. Past racial redistricting legal challenges often focused on cracking concentrated racial minorities to prevent the creation of majority-minority districts. Future lawsuits may also follow in the steps of recent successful court challenges against racially motivated packing that resulted in the reduction of minority population percentage in a previously majority-minority district in order to enhance minority opportunity in an adjacent non-majority-minority district.

ARE MAJORITY MINORITY DISTRICTS TOO SAFE?

AbstractHow does gerrymandering affect intraparty and interparty electoral competition in state legislatures? Research has shown that electoral competition produces better representation and that descriptive representation positively affects substantive representation or policy outcomes. However, other studies have found an ever increasing incumbency advantage. I argue that the incumbency advantage within Majority Minority Districts is significant and distinct from that of majority White Democrat and Republican districts. I estimate levels of intraparty and interparty competition among Majority Minority Districts, majority White Democrat districts, and majority White Republican districts in the state legislature of Alabama. I use majority White Democrat districts as an intraparty comparison group because of African American’s statistically high support for the Democrat Party. Using three separate measures of competitiveness, I find racial gerrymandering in Alabama has a significant andsui generisnegative effect on competition within Majority Minority Districts, compared to majority White districts.

중국 호남성 소수민족지역 의무교육단계 농촌교사의 소진과 사회적 지지 및 직무몰입의 관계

중국 호남성 소수민족지역 의무교육단계 농촌교사의 소진과 사회적 지지 및 직무몰입의 관계

The Electoral College, battleground states, and rule-utilitarian voting

We extend the Feddersen and Sandroni (Am Econ Rev 96(4):1271–1282, 2006) voter turnout model to include partisan districts, a battleground district, and an Electoral College. We find that expected voter turnout by a single party is highest in the battleground district, followed by the party’s majority district, which in turn is followed by the party’s minority district. Total turnout is higher in the battleground district than in the partisan districts, but the gap decreases as the level of disagreement in the partisan districts increases. Lastly, turnout in the battleground district decreases as the partisan districts become more competitive.

중국 소수민족지역 의무교육단계 농촌학교 교사소진척도 개발 및 타당화

중국 소수민족지역 의무교육단계 농촌학교 교사소진척도 개발 및 타당화

Not the usual story: the effect of candidate supply on models of Latino descriptive representation

Most of the literature on descriptive representation focuses on voters and the choices they make during an election. Missing from this scholarship, however, is a more complete picture of when and where minority candidates are on the ballot. In this study, we focus on the context in which Latinos are on the ballot in state legislative elections, and the relationship between winning and district composition. We present results using a unique data-set from the 2012 general elections that allows us to compare and contrast empirical analyses and predictions with and without the censoring effect of Latino candidate supply. The findings challenge the traditional role of majority–minority districts, and show quite decisively that descriptive representation is not only a demand problem, as it has been understood for the last few decades, but also a problem of minority candidate supply.

The Electoral College, Battleground States, and Rule-Utilitarian Voting

We extend the Feddersen and Sandroni (2006) voter turnout model to include partisan districts, a battleground district, and an Electoral College. We find that expected voter turnout by a single party is highest in the battleground district, followed by the party's majority district, which in turn is followed by the party's minority district. Total turnout is higher in the battleground district than in the partisan districts, but the gap decreases as the level of disagreement in the partisan districts increases. Simulations show that the probability that the popular vote coincides with the Electoral vote has a non-monotonic relationship with the level of disagreement in the partisan districts. However, as the importance of the election approaches infinity, the probability that the Electoral and popular votes coincide increases with the level of disagreement in the partisan districts.

Characterization of CTX‐M‐type extended‐spectrum beta‐lactamase in clinical clones of Escherichia coli in Southwest China

The rapid and widespread dissemination of CTX-M-type extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) Escherichia coli in most of the provinces in China has been previously characterized; however, these enzymes have been rarely reported among minority regions. A prospective study using 180 E. coli clones from three hospitals in the minority district of Dali Bai was conducted between January 2009 and June 2010 to characterize the profiles of bla(CTX-M) -producing E. coli. Overall, 87 of the isolates (48.3%) encoded the resistance phenotypes of ESBLs. Among these 87 isolates, 56 (64.4%) exconjugants were successfully obtained. The genotypes of bla(CTX-M) were evaluated by PCR and DNA sequencing. In total, 22 and 53 E. coli isolates possessed CTX-M cluster 1 and CTX-M cluster 9, respectively. Five bla(CTX-M) subtypes were detected, namely, bla(CTX-M3) (n = 12), bla(CTX-M15) (n = 4), bla(CTX-M22) (n = 2), bla(CTX-M14) (n = 41), and bla(CTX-M9) (n = 8). The broth microdilution method was performed to determine the minimal inhibitory concentration of 13 antibiotics. Most CTX-M producers were multiply resistant to both β-lactam and non-β-lactam antibiotics. Imipenem showed excellent activity, and only one isolate harboring bla(CTX-M14+CTX-M3) exhibited resistance to it. In conclusion, there seems to be great concern regarding the distribution and drug resistance of CTX-M ESBL-producing E. coli.

Multi-level Political Careers in the USA: The Cases of African Americans and Women

This article explores what forces shape the careers of women and African American legislators, focusing on two key stages in the process: the election to state legislatures and the election to the US House of Representatives. We further consider the impact of that process on the maintenance of the political class in the US. Our findings suggest that African American members get elected when there are enough African American voters to elect them. State houses provide a nice starting point because the districts tend to be small allowing for a number of majority minority districts. But, at each successive step, i.e., the state senate and the US House, other factors enter the process. As districts get larger and the stakes get higher, it seems that success also becomes dependent on the number of African American politicians primed to move up by having experience serving in the preceding body. The pattern for women is less predictable with cultural variables and opportunity structure playing a role. The supply of candidates is the one variable common to women and African Americans. We conclude that the process is in many ways similar to that for white males and facilitates the stability of the political class.

Localism and Voting Rights

The Voting Rights Act's (VRA) preclearance regime requires covered jurisdictions to submit all law changes affecting elections to United States Attorney General for approval before they can be enforced. This regime has been persistently characterized as a uniquely heavy-handed federal intervention into state and local lawmaking. In a constitutional challenge to preclearance regime now before Supreme Court, petitioners have called it the most federally invasive law in existence. This article counters this conventional view by showing that institutionalization of antidiscrimination policy by VRA is consistent with decentralization and localism. In so doing, this article pursues several goals. First, it challenges standard opposition of localism and rights. By focusing on implementation and institutionalization of voting rights, it emerges that more decentralized approach of VRA has been very successful. The article draws a contrast in this regard with much more equivocal success of more formal, precise, categorical approach of one-person/one-vote rule. Finally, understanding of VRA's institutional architecture advanced in this article is then applied to other issues arising from 2006 Reauthorization of VRA. The paper argues, for example, that it is consistent with methods and goals of VRA that Ashcroft fix in new Section 5 be read as permitting trade-offs of majority minority districts for coalition districts, but only if consent of local minority representatives is obtained. The paper addresses several other issues based on this approach.

Race and Redistricting: What the Print Media Conveys to the Public about the Role of Race

In a series of voting rights cases, the U.S. Supreme Court held that race‐based redistricting, particularly the intentional formation of majority–minority districts (districts in which voters of color constitute a majority of eligible voters) may be unconstitutional if race was the predominant factor in the formation of the district. The Court stated that “redistricting legislation that is so bizarre on its face that it is unexplainable on grounds other than race” may violate the Constitution because of the messages such districts send to the public ( Shaw v. Reno, 1993 ). Yet neither the Court nor social scientists have examined whether the existence of race‐conscious majority–minority districts sends messages to voters and what the nature of these messages may be. This research begins to address this scientific issue. In a quantitative content analysis, we examined messages about racial redistricting conveyed to citizens via the print media. Our sample consisted of 355 newspaper articles about redistricting included in the Lexis–Nexis database between 1990 and 2005. We found that newspaper coverage of racial districting contains messages to citizens about the motives involved in redistricting, the individuals and groups who are responsible for it, and its actual and expected effects. This finding is consistent with the Supreme Court's assumption that districts, particularly bizarrely shaped ones, convey distinct messages to voters. The specific messages communicated varied in important ways across the articles. Newspapers in states subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because of their history of discrimination against voters of color covered racial redistricting differently than states not subject to Section 5. We discuss the legal and theoretical implications of these findings for understanding the role of race in legislative redistricting efforts.

County Variation in Children's and Adolescent's Health Status and School District Performance in California

We examined the association between county-level estimates of children's health status and school district performance in California. We used 3 data sources: the California Health Interview Survey, district archives from the California Department of Education, and census-based estimates of county demographic characteristics. We used logistic regression to estimate whether a school district's failure to meet adequate yearly progress goals in 2004 to 2005 was a function of child and adolescent's health status. Models included district- and county-level fixed effects and were adjusted for the clustering of districts within counties. County-level changes in children's and adolescent's health status decreased the likelihood that a school district would fail to meet adequate yearly progress goals during the investigation period. Health status did not moderate the relatively poor performance of predominantly minority districts. We found empirical support that area variation in children's and adolescent's health status exerts a contextual effect on school district performance. Future research should explore the specific mechanisms through which area-level child health influences school and district achievement.

The Mobilizing Effect of Majority–Minority Districts on Latino Turnout

We inquire whether residence in majority–minority districts raises or lowers turnout among Latinos. We argue that the logic suggesting that majority–minority districts suppress turnout is flawed and hypothesize that the net effect is empowering. Further, we suggest that residing in multiple overlapping majority–minority districts—for state assemblies, senates, and the U.S. House—further enhances turnout. We test our hypotheses using individual-level turnout data for voters in five Southern California counties. Examining three general elections from 1996 to 2000, we demonstrate that residing in a majority-Latino district ultimately has a positive effect on the propensity of Latino voters to turn out, an effect that increases with the number of Latino districts in which the voter resides and is consistent across the individual offices in which a voter might be descriptively represented. In contrast, the probability that non-Hispanic voters turn out decreases as they are subject to increasing layers of majority-Latino districting.

Southern Politics in the 1990s

Southern Politics in the 1990s. Edited by Alexander P. Lamis. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Pp. xviii, 490. $39.95, ISBN 0-8071-2374-9.) Scholars have attempted to update V. O. Key's magisterial Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949) at regular intervals since the 1960s. It seems to require, in most cases, at least a dozen political scientists to match Key's exquisite thematic analysis and his memorable depiction of individual states. (Of course, to be fair, Key had a research team working with him.) Although such volumes are often worthy memorials to Key, none has quite matched his scholarly virtuosity. Alexander P. Lamis has long worked in this genre. He single-handedly produced The Two-Party South (New York, 1984), a justly praised book that reviewed the southern political terrain during the critical years of the 1970s and early 1980s. He continues the story, this time with the aid of twelve journalists and fourteen political scientists (at least one of each per each state), in Southern Politics in the 1990s. Between Lamis's useful introductory and concluding chapters, the book moves from state to state to focus on the rise of the Republican Party in the South during the 1990s, especially during the critical years surrounding the 1994 election. After the Democrats recovered from the first Republican challenges during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the party continued to dominate southern politics by molding an effective biracial coalition of blacks and moderate whites. That combination was still working quite well as late as 1990. The Republicans might exploit scandals and other exceptional circumstances, or the talents and money of charismatic individuals, to win some races for top state offices and even the presidency, but the GOP found it much harder to make inroads down-ticket. State legislatures and local governments remained in Democratic hands, with Republicans not bothering to contest many offices. By the early 1990s, however, demographic trends benefited the Republicans. For years a burgeoning middle class, a wave of in-migration, and booming suburban communities all created potential Republicans (as well as independents). The GOP finally tapped this potential following the 1990 census as a result of legislative--and often judicial--reapportionment for the U.S. House of Representatives and state chambers. Most reapportionment plans created minority districts that were to be won by black Democrats, but at the cost of making many other districts majority Republican. The GOP's biggest advance came in 1994, when reapportionment, strategic errors, and the unpopularity of President Bill Clinton hurt the Democratic Party. …

Back in their proper place:: racial gerrymandering in Georgia

During this decade the United States Supreme Court has made significant rulings on constitutional challenges to representative districts purposefully drawn to empower minorities as district majorities. Arguments have set the Voting Rights Act against the Fourteenth Amendment's goal of a colorblind society. The court has generally struck down the aggressive drawing of majority–minority districts, finding them racial classifications not narrowly tailored to achieve compelling state interests. This study analyzes and evaluates these legal developments, principally through a focus upon the most recent litigation in Georgia. My thesis — that the Court has muddled the jurisprudence of representation, voting rights and racial equality because of its inability to treat politics and geography with consistency, depth, rigor and judgment — will be explored in connection with five questions. First, can compact and regular shape provide the courts with a concept to properly assess the legal issues without involving the courts in intractable and injudicious political questions? Second, does a bizarrely shaped district “broadcast” such an invidious racial message as to constitute a “stigmatic harm” which provides plaintiffs with standing to challenge the district? Third, is a district's bizarre shape critical evidence of the districters' intent to discriminate? Fourth, is “community of interest” a significantly richer criterion than shape for evaluating racial gerrymandering claims and defenses? Fifth, what is the proper legal role of traditional criteria of territorial representation as the benchmarks for distinguishing permissible from impermissible race-conscious districting?

The Influence of Race in School Finance Reform

There is some evidence, from past social science studies, that school finance reform is seen by citizens--and especially white parents--through a racial lens. This Article picks up that point--which is nothing more than a hint, really--and tries to explore the role of race in school finance reform by surveying the history and success of minority districts in school finance reform litigation. The Article examines how predominantly minority districts have fared in school finance litigation (and subsequent legislative reforms) as compared to predominantly white districts, and concludes that minority districts fare worse than their white counterparts both in court and before the legislature. Based on this and other evidence, this Article contends that there are strong reasons to believe that the racial composition of the school district plays an influential role in determining success or failure in school finance litigation and legislative reform. As the Article explains, this evidence has important academic, historical, and practical implications. Indeed, if the Article is correct in asserting that race plays an influential role in school finance reform, school finance scholars and practitioners should begin paying closer attention than they have to the dynamics of race relations and school desegregation; historians and legal scholars should recognize with added confidence the wisdom of the NAACP's desegregation strategy; and civil rights attorneys, courts, critical race theorists, and conservative critcs of desegregation should hesitate before abandoning the goal of desegregation.