“Can Social Science Evidence Be Trusted in Voting Rights Litigation? Ascertaining Whether a Minority Community Will Have an Equal Opportunity to Elect a Candidate of its Choice in a Given Legislative or Congressional District”

Bernie Grofman, Lisa Handley and David Lublin have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

We address recent skepticism by Chief Justice Roberts about the usefulness of social science tools of analysis in litigation about redistricting. Limiting our discussion to race-related redistricting litigation, we demonstrate that social science methodology has been able to provide reliable information to courts about the success of minority candidates of choice in redrawn or existing districts. In redrawn districts, this predictive success has been found even in the districts where the implemented recommendation of the social science expert was a remedial district in which minorities were less than a majority of the voting age population in the district.

Share this: