At-Large Bias

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals broke no new legal ground on Wednesday when it handed down a ruling that makes it easier for minority groups to challenge at-large elections for local government bodies in California. But the decision is important because, if fully implemented, it should stimulate greater voter participation by minorities, especially Latinos.

The court held that the city of Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County, is perpetuating discrimination against its Latino residents by continuing to hold at-large elections for its city council. About half of Watsonville’s 25,543 residents are Latino, yet no Latino has won election to public office there for nearly 15 years. The Latino plaintiffs in the case argued that they would have a better chance of electing one of their own if the city were divided into electoral districts for council elections. Attorneys representing the city countered that the reason Latino candidates could not win in Watsonville was not because of the city’s election system but because voter registration and turnout among Latinos is low. Writing for the court, Judge Dorothy W. Nelson specifically rejected the city’s argument, concluding that “low voter registration and turnout levels are indicative of lingering effects of past discrimination” against Mexican-Americans, not just in California but throughout the Southwest.

In accepting the plaintiffs’ argument, Nelson helped bring California into step with Texas, which has been phasing out at-large election systems since 1980, when a series of lawsuits similar to the Watsonville case were filed by the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The same two organizations helped file the Watsonville case, and have other lawsuits pending against California cities that use at-large election systems--including San Diego, Stockton and Pomona. All told, more than 400 of the state’s 450 cities still use the at-large system to elect either their city councils or their school boards, and many are resisting efforts to change it. The Watsonville ruling should persuade them that the time for change is at hand. They should also look to Texas to see just how well the future can work.

In the decades before 1980 virtually every major city in Texas, including Houston and Dallas, elected its city council and school board on an at-large basis. As a result, few Mexican-Americans or blacks ever won election. Since Texas’ cities began electing local officials by district, dozens of minority candidates have managed to win elections--including Henry Cisneros, a popular Latino mayor in San Antonio.

Texas’ experience supports the argument often made by the late Willie Velasquez, founder of the Southwest voter project, that Mexican-Americans will register and vote if they believe that Latino candidates have a chance to win. “You can’t expect Mexicanos to care about voting if they always lose,” he would say in explaining the low voter participation among Texas Latinos. “But if you give them a fair chance to elect a Mexicano , they’ll register and they’ll turn out.” The Watsonville decision goes a long way toward giving Latinos the fair chance that they deserve in California.