Did Shelby County v. Holder Increase the Racial Turnout Gap?

Abstract

Between 1965 and 2013, many states and localities with histories of racial discrimination in their voting practices were required to pre-clear any changes to their electoral policies with the federal government to ensure they would not have racially discriminatory effects. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in Shelby County v. Holder, effectively nullifying this "preclearance condition" in the VRA. We begin by examining the policies submitted for (and those blocked by) preclearance during the half-century in which it was operative, showing that preclearance largely prevented discriminatory local policies from going into effect. We then leverage nearly a billion individual-level vote records to show that Shelby County increased the racial turnout gap. We find that these effects were concentrated in counties where policies had been blocked by preclearance, and where specifically local policies were constrained by the VRA

Keywords: Voter Turnout, Supreme Court, Voting Rights