Date: 25 November 2026
Time: 10:00-11:45
Venue: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 in Stockholm or online
Ying Shi is an Associate Professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse University. Her research sits at the intersection of the economics of education, labor economics, and political economy, with a particular focus on racial inequality. Broadly, she studies how institutions, discrimination, and social contexts may shape access to educational and political opportunity.
Abstract
Can electoral maps drawn without regard to race still disadvantage racial minorities? In the United States, debates about electoral boundaries usually focus on intentional manipulation by mapmakers. Despite ample attention to gerrymandering at the state and congressional levels, local maps have not been systematically measured to understand how communities translate population into political power.
In this talk I present the first nationwide analysis of racial representation in local electoral maps. My coauthors and I use nationwide voter files and Census data to reconstruct over 3,700 U.S. city council and county commission maps covering more than 18,000 districts. We show that local maps overrepresent White voters and underrepresent Black and Hispanic voters. Strikingly, simulated maps drawn without regard to race reproduce much of this inequality, demonstrating that existing residential geography creates unequal electoral opportunities even without deliberate manipulation of boundaries. Enacted maps improve on this race-neutral baseline mainly in jurisdictions historically subject to Voting Rights Act oversight or litigation. As U.S. courts curtail race-conscious approaches to drawing electoral boundaries, formally neutral rules may leave substantively unequal representation in place.
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