Although the 1965 Voting Rights Act has been hailed as perhaps the most successful piece of policy legislation enacted in the post-WWII era, scientific work examining its influence and consequences has been remarkably absent. While there are views about the Act's impact and a literature dealing with impact and implementation in a host of other legislative domains, most of the best scholarship dealing with the Act has been legal and constitutional despite the scope and importance of this piece of legislation. With some recent and important exceptions, most empirical work to date has been anecdotal or at a relatively low level of conceptualization and methodological sophistication. Drs. Grofman and Davidson along with a team of cooperating investigators seek to remedy this situation through undertaking a systematic, multi-site project. The design includes each of the seven states in the deep South originally covered by the Act and selected other states in the Midwest and Northeast with substantial black and Hispanic populations and in the Southwest with significant Mexican-American, Native American, or black populations. A minimum of four data bases will be formed: (1) a before and after data base for all jurisdictions which have shifted from at-large to a single-member district or mixed system, (2) a longitudinal data base on changes in minority representation in a random sample of jurisdictions continually using at-large elections, (3) a data base for all single-member and at-large districts identifying minority population size and electoral outcomes, and (4) a data base for a sample of all elected minority officials, identifying election type and other relevant characteristics of the jurisdiction. Data will be gathered at the city, county, school board, and state legislative level. To facilitate comparative longitudinal analysis, data from different levels of government will be aggregated at the county level. This major effort can be expected to produce equally major contributions. At a theoretical level, the work holds substantial promise of adding to our understanding of the consequences of voting systems, the impact of law on social change, and the dynamics underlying implementation. At a substantive level, this study will produce knowledge about race relations in America and one of the most important and far reaching federal laws to be enacted in the twentieth century. Further, beyond what will be accomplished by this team of investigators, the project will also yield a substantial data base appropriate for the analytic purposes of other scholars.
