Can States Promote Minority Representation? Assessing the Effects of the California Voting Rights Act

One goal of the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) is to broaden representation in largely White-controlled city councils state-wide by incentivizing cities to shift council electoral jurisdictions from at-large to single-member districts. However, little research has investigated whether the CVRA helped contribute to increased minority representation at the city level. This article employs matching and difference-in-difference methods to determine whether cities that switched to district elections as a result of the CVRA enhanced city council diversification. By comparing matched treatment and control group’s racial composition of city councils before and after fully switching from at-large to district election jurisdictions, we estimate the average treatment effect (ATE) of city switching on minority city council representation at 10% to 12%. Further analysis reveals treatment effects are larger among cities with larger shares of Latinos (21%). Thus, states seeking to increase local-level minority representation should consider policies similar to those found in the CVRA.