Minority voters

Voter turnout among members of different groups of Americans varies widely, with Latinos and Asians generally lagging behind other groups. Blacks usually fall in between, with turnout usually ahead of other minorities but behind whites—although black participation surged in 2008 and 2012 in response to the historic candidacy of Barack Obama. Additional segments of the American public also vote less than they might, including lower-income citizens and youth.

Low levels of voting matter, because election results are supposed to reflect the preferences of all Americans. In addition, recent trends indicate that Latinos, if they vote at their full potential, have considerable capacity to influence election outcomes, increasingly at the national as well as state and local level. Getting out the Latino vote was a crucial part of the Obama 2012 reelection strategy, and activists striving to boost Democratic Party prospects in Texas are spending tens of millions of dollars registering eligible Latinos. Understanding how to motivate voting by Latinos and other under-engaged citizens is thus of concern to candidates and parties as well as scholars.

How Can Reluctant Voters Be Mobilized?

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In some ways, the United States has made great progress toward including men and women from minority backgrounds in elective offices. A black president sits in the White House; the 113th Congress includes two Asian American and two Latino Senators along with 44 black and 30 Latino members of the House. More than one thousand minorities sit in state legislatures, 13 percent of the total; and the ranks of black and Latino mayors have also swelled. Yet despite this progress, gains for minorities in U.S. elective offices have failed to keep up with the presence of racial and ethnic minorities in the national population—and the shortfall is growing.

What explains this gap in representation? Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, social scientists have investigated minority underrepresentation from a demand perspective—that is, they have asked how the attitudes and behaviors of voters influence the chances of minority candidates to win elections and take office. However, minorities cannot win elections if they do not run, so my research also focuses on the prior, critical issue of the supply of minority candidates. To what degree is representational imbalance due to too few minority contenders? more...

Across America, state governments are considering – and in some cases enacting – a veritable flood of new laws regulating voting and limiting access to the polls. Leading the list are laws requiring would-be voters to show specific kinds of photo identification before they can vote – including types of IDs not easily accessible to many otherwise eligible voters. Additional measures include tighter regulation of organizations and individuals who aim to register new voters, shorter periods for early voting, and the repeal of same-day voter registration laws. Many studies show that such measures dissuade or disenfranchise significant numbers of voters. Minorities, young people, and the very old are especially likely to be hampered. Since these groups disproportionately vote for Democrats, the new restrictions have the potential to actually change election outcomes.

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The Voting Rights Act was a monumental achievement of the modern struggle for racial equality in the United States. After legislators from both parties passed the law in 1965, sustained implementation was enabled by broad bipartisan support. Congress has renewed and strengthened the act several times, sometimes pushing into territory the Supreme Court was reluctant to sanction. The most recent reauthorization in 2006 was strongly supported by President George W. Bush, and by many Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress.

But the long stretch of broad support is at an end. During arguments in a 2009 case before the Supreme Court, both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy expressed concern that the act’s enforcement authority may have outlived its utility. Their skepticism was directed at Section 5, which authorizes the Department of Justice to block changes in election rules in states designated for special scrutiny because of their history of legalized racial discrimination. Since 2009, state Republican leaders have swelled the chorus of doubters.

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