States Partially Covered by the Section 5 Voting Rights Act

The open voting access of African-Americans resulted in Florida not being initially subject to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The subsequent, new trigger mechanism adopted in 1975 made five Florida counties subject to Section 5’s “preclearance” requirement: Collier, Hardee, Hendree, Hillsborough, and Monroe. Hispanics have subsequently supplanted African-Americans as the state’s largest minority group. Of the state’s 2.7 million Hispanics, over 48 percent live in Dade County. Florida’s five Section 5 counties do not contain the bulk of the language minorities in the state.

The rate at which voting age Latinos have registered to vote in Florida has increased slightly over the last quarter century. The percent rate of age-eligible Latinos registered in Florida exceeded that for Hispanics outside the South since 1986 (with the exception of 1994). The Census Bureau estimates for turnout indicate no consistent change in the share of the Latinos of voting age who have cast ballots in Florida.

Census Bureau estimates of black registration indicate no consistent increase in the share of the African-American voting age population that has registered in Florida. Moreover the rate at which Florida African-Americans registered to vote continues to be lower than in the rest of the nation. The Florida Secretary of State shows the numbers of blacks registered to vote increasing from 1996 to 2004. Census Bureau turnout estimates continue to show African-Americans voting at much lower rates than do Anglos. From 1980 until 2004, there is no evidence of the disparity between the two races being closed. African-Americans report voting at lower rates in Florida than in the non-South.

Minorities have made significant gains in terms of descriptive representation in Congress. The percent of the congressional seats filled by each minority group approximates the group’s share of the voting age population in the state. Florida’s African-Americans have even larger shares of the seats in the state legislature and hold a larger percentage of the seats than their share of the voting age population. Latinos hold smaller shares of the seats in the Florida legislature than congressional delegation.

In the Section 5 counties, the Latino population is either too small or too scattered to facilitate election of Hispanics. It is typically impossible to draw a state legislative district or congressional district entirely in these counties in which the bulk of the population is Latino. The one exception comes in Collier County where many Latinos are combined with an even larger Latino population in neighboring Dade County.

Estimates of voting preferences of Latinos in South Florida raise questions about the desirability of combining Dade Latinos with Collier or Monroe Latinos. The Latino population in Dade is heavily Cuban and provides strong support for Republicans. In Collier and other south Florida counties, the Latino electorate is more inclined to support Democrats. Thus while a district that straddles the Collier-Dade boundary is likely to elect a Latino and thus provide descriptive representation for that ethnic group, the winner may well not be the candidate of choice of the Latinos in Collier, the county that is covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

Edward Blum is a visiting fellow at AEI. He is the author of The Unintended Consequences of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (AEI Press, 2007). Abigail Thernstrom is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.