The Re-Precincting of Louisiana following Shelby County: Was Race a Factor?

• In Event: Race and Public Policy

Abstract

Following the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, previously covered jurisdictions were free to make changes to their electoral laws and administration without their previous restrictions under Section 5. This included redistricting, which goes from congressional and state legislative districts to individual precincts. Voting rights advocates noticed that these jurisdictions after being freed from coverage consolidated or eliminated hundreds of precincts. One of these covered jurisdictions was Louisiana, which had the highest percentage of counties (parishes) of all states that had VRA violations of all fully covered states. It is also a state where all but two of 64 parishes have an African-American population that exceeds 10%. In Louisiana, more than 300 precincts were reduced when comparing the 2012 and 2016 precinct maps using GIS mapping. This paper finds that the reductions in Louisiana had a racially discriminatory effect, in that as the proportion of African-Americans in a precinct increased, so did their likelihood of being consolidated, thus made larger, and harder for those voters to cast a ballot. Despite Chief Justice Roberts in Shelby County announcing to the nation that “our country had changed” when referring to initial passage of preclearance, he may have misjudged how much individual parishes in Louisiana would act to reduce the number of voting precincts that it provides, and would do so in a racially discriminatory manner.

Author

• Shawn J Donahue, University at Buffalo