Santa Clara’s two-year journey to a City Council that mirrors the City’s multi-ethnic population is historic and follows Santa Clara’s change to single-member City Council districts, after the City lost a California Voting Rights Act (CVRA).

It’s a safe bet that the historic change will be part of future studies of the impact of the 2002 law. California has no shortage of political scientists looking at how the CVRA has impacted local government in the State, so we asked three of them to weigh in.

Santa Clara a Statistical Outlier, But Logical 

anta Clara’s experience in its first by-district election is typical, although the number of minority representatives in Santa Clara isn’t, according to Loren Collingwood, UC Riverside Associate Professor of Political Science.

Collingwood is the co-author of the first statistical study specifically of CVRA impacts, “Can States Promote Minority Representation? Assessing The Effects Of The California Voting Rights Act.”

“We studied 30 cases,” said Collingwood. “We’re seeing an average of one seat. In larger cities there might be one and a half seats.”

Santa Clara’s minority representation after this election “is larger than our research has found,” Collingwood continued, “but not outside the bounds of rationality. Asian Americans are the fastest growing immigrant population. I would expect that kind of change given the demographic changes in California.”

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