[EL] In the spirit of the old listserv

[Morgan Kousser]

Brian,
   Wilford Smith had statistics on registration by county, by race in 
his brief in Giles v. Harris (1903), so Alabama must have collected the 
data then.  Louisiana had registration statistics by race before and 
after the 1898 constitutional convention.  And as I recall, the 1867 
Second Reconstruction Act mandated registration statistics by race in 
all 10 of the covered states.  Some of them no doubt stopped collecting 
registration statistics by race during the 1870s and 80s, but I've never 
tried to look at this question systematically.
Morgan

On 8/27/2012 5:56 PM, Brian Landsberg wrote:
>
> I have copies of Alabama registration forms dating back to 1902. The 
> 1902 forms does not have a space in which to indicate race; the 1922 
> form does.  Alabama voting laws were changed in the early 1900s, and 
> my recollection is that the Alabama Supreme Court at some point was 
> given the responsibility of designing them.  They were very useful to 
> DOJ in developing proof of discrimination.  One exception, which I 
> mention in Free at Last to Vote, was Elmore County, where the 
> registrar burned the application forms.  We had a list of applicants 
> and registrants and had to reconstruct the racial statistics through 
> interviews and other methods, as I recall.
>
> Brian K. Landsberg
>
> Distinguished Professor and Scholar
>
> Pacific McGeorge School of Law
>
> 3200 Fifth Avenue, Sacramento CA 95817
>
> 916 739-7103
>
> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu 
> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] *On Behalf Of 
> *Gerken, Heather
> *Sent:* Monday, August 27, 2012 10:31 AM
> *To:* law-election at uci.edu
> *Subject:* [EL] In the spirit of the old listserv
>
> All,
>
> In the spirit of the old listserv, I'm writing to ask a non-rhetorical 
> question.  A political scientist at Yale, Eitan Hersh, is doing 
> research on the racial identifiers that are public record on the voter 
> files in eight southern states.  He's trying to identify the origin of 
> these racial identifiers.  Some people think that they are tied to VRA 
> data collection requirements, but Hersh hasn't found any evidence of 
> that suggestion.  Moreover, the collection of the data in some of the 
> states predates the VRA, and  some covered jurisdictions don't collect 
> reach information on the voter files, while others do.  It's an 
> interesting question, and I was hoping that the many lawyers and 
> academics on the list who were involved in the early cases might have 
> an answer for Professor Hersh. The paper can be found her, 
> http://www.eitanhersh.com/uploads/7/9/7/5/7975685/racialized_electioneering.pdf. 
>  If you happen to have a lead, I'd appreciate off-list answers that I 
> could forward to Professor Hersh.
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Heather Gerken
>
> Heather Gerken
>
> J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law
>
> Yale Law School
>
> 127 Wall Street
>
> New Haven CT  06511
>
> ph (203) 432-8022
>
> fax (203) 432-8095
>
>
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