One person — one vote.

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) was passed by Congress in 1965 to stop voting discrimination based on race, and to require states, counties, cities and other jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination or depressed minority political participation to provide fair treatment to racial minorities.

 

The Act was amended in 1982 to require that certain jurisdictions take steps to give minority voters an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice. Critics would say that gerrymandering has evolved from a discriminatory tactic used to prevent African-Americans from attaining public office to an insurance policy guaranteeing blacks and Latinos certain minority-controlled districts around the country.

 

The VRA seems to have made a difference. Minorities are underrepresented in federal government. Although African-Americans compose more than 12% of the U.S. population, only 42 black Representatives serve in the U.S. House, and only one black Senator is elected (less than 8% representation). A similar lack of representation exists, in most cases, at the state and local level. Still, the number of black elected officials has increased from just 300 nationwide in 1964 to more than 9,100 today, and nearly 5,000 Latinos hold public office.

 

The  Act has been criticized because of the requirement to draw “majority-minority” districts, also referred to as “max-black” districts. The provision has been criticized by both sides of the political spectrum: by conservatives as undemocratic – “the new gerrymandering” – and by progressives for its unintended consequence of “herd[ing] minorities into a few areas while leaving adjacent districts overwhelmingly white,” thus granting a handful of minority candidates public office without giving the minority community real power.

 

Since black voters in Ohio have had a history of voting Democratic, the majority Republican Apportionment Board in 1991 had a natural interest in packing them into as few districts as possible. That interest coincided with the interest of the Ohio Branch of the NAACP, who wanted to elect as many black legislators as possible. The two worked together to create a plan that included five black-majority districts.

 

Democratic plaintiffs attacked the plan, alleging that it diluted the voting strength of black voters because blacks had historically often supported the same candidates as whites – that is, Democrats. Black and white Democrats often lived in the same areas, so that creating black-majority House districts also created super-majority Democratic districts, thus reducing the number of seats Democrats were likely to win statewide. This arrangement may have helped black candidates, but plaintiffs alleged that it hurt black voters by diluting their influence in other districts. Voinovich v. Quilter, 507 U.S. 146 (1993).  The Court supported the 1991 plan.

  

The impact of gerrymandering.