An Intervention that Worked: How Alternative Voting Systems Promoted Hispanic Voter Integration into Political/Public Life

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 05. Transnational politics / immigrant political participation

Abstract

What happens when local At Large voting systems systematically disadvantage non-White voters, and more than 1400 of New York State’s 1525 places use that system for their elections? What happens in a place that has a large, growing Hispanic population is forced to abandon At Large voting and choses an alternative voting system, here cumulative voting?
This chapter analyzes the case of the Village of Port Chester, NY, which was the only place in New York State to use an alternative voting scheme (starting in 2010) before the 2022 New York State Voting Rights Act made it possible to sue to change At Large systems. It draws on my long-term ethnographic research, begun after I was an expert witness (2006-2008) for the federal Department of Justice when they sued Port Chester in 2006, resulting in Port Chester adopting cumulative voting. The chapter (and larger book) will draw on extensive ethnographic, interview, and secondary and public source data over an extended period to the 2025 municipal elections.
The study makes several contributions on the legal bases of democratic governance. First, it analyzes an intervention into the legal bases of democratic governance that actually worked, by promoting the integration of Hispanic voters into public and political life in Port Chester. That most places use At Large voting in NYS makes this case important. Second, the chapter will analyze how and why the intervention worked by demonstrating first how and why Hispanic voters were excluded or left out of several political processes under At Large voting, then tracing how these processes changed after the adoption of cumulative voting. Third, litigation and repeated public debate about the change in the voting system in Port Chester made public and clear the beliefs and invisible processes that had formerly disadvantaged Hispanics successful participation in political life.

Author

• Robert Courtney Smith, Baruch College, CUNY