The Geography of Racial Stereotyping: Evidence and Implications for VRA Preclearance After Shelby County

• DOI: 10.15779/z38pr6r
• Publication Date: 2014-10-01
• Authors: Christopher Elmen...; Douglas M. Spencer
• Keywords: Civil Rights and Discrimination; 05 social sciences; Election Law; 320; 16. Peace & justice; 0506 political science

The Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) effectively enjoined the preclearance regime of Voting Rights Act. deemed coverage formula, which determines jurisdictions subject to preclearance, insufficiently grounded current conditions. This Article proposes a new, legally defensible approach based on between-state differences proportion voting age citizens who subscribe negative stereotypes about racial minorities and vote accordingly. new formula could also account for racially polarized minority population size, but, constitutional reasons, subjective discrimination by voters is essential criterion. We demonstrate that racial-stereotyping, polarized-voting, population-size criteria would yield similar patterns coverage, at least with respect African Americans, we show, ironically, pattern coincide historic under “outdated” invalidated County. Recently developed statistical techniques permit be further refined estimates