A presentation by Asya Magazzinik (visting scholar from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). This event is part of the Political Economy Lunch Seminar (PELS).
Legislative elections conducted by geographic districts rather than at-large have long been considered a tool for promoting minority representation in government. But surprisingly little is understood about how district-based electoral maps shape political outcomes. We collect over one hundred newly drawn district maps from cities across California that converted from at-large to district elections in the wake of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, which was adopted with the intent of increasing Latino representation on city councils. Applying a state-of-the-art automated redistricting simulator, we assess the favorability of the adopted plans to Latino voters, given the geographic and legal constraints on feasible plans. We show that the favorability of plans is under the greatest political control in segregated cities: whereas segregated cities can produce plans that are wide-ranging in their favorability to the minority population, less segregated cities are constrained in this choice by their residential geography. We also assess the consequences of district plans for the ideological and partisan composition of councils.
