Source Collect: Beyond District Lines: Rethinking the California Voting Rights Act’s Promise of Fair Representation
Source Collect: Beyond District Lines: Rethinking the California Voting Rights Act’s Promise of Fair Representation (with Zachary Griggy and Jonah P. Smith)
SPEAKERS
Host: Davis Rich
Guests: Zachary Griggy and Jonah P. Smith, Berkeley Law
Judge Thelton E. Henderson 00:04
And that's what sustains our system: is that having one's day in court, feeling you were heard, and even though you don't agree with the ruling, you feel you've been through a fair process.
Davis Rich 00:14
It's almost election season in California, and this year marks the 25th anniversary since the introduction of the California Voting Rights Act, a law intended to eliminate electoral systems that dilute the voting power of racial minorities. Since the CVRA took effect in 2003, the Act transformed California's electoral systems. But did it create fair representation for people of color?
My name is Davis Rich, and this is Source Collect, the podcast of the California Law Review. At the California Law Review, we strive to collect sources that underscore how law shapes society and how society shapes the law. The goal of our podcast is to provide an accessible and thought-provoking overview of the scholarship we publish. On today's episode, Berkeley Law students Zach Griggy and Jonah Smith join Source Collect to discuss their student Note, Beyond District Lines: Rethinking the California Voting Rights Act's Promise of Fair Representation.
Jonah, Zach, welcome to Source Collect. It's a special occasion when we feature authors of Notes on the podcast, so I wanted to ask each of you about the process of writing a Note. What motivated you to write this Note, and what were your favorite parts of this process?
Zach Griggy 01:30
Yeah, so thank you for having us on. I first realized I wanted to work on this topic way back in 2020 when I read in my hometown newspaper a column that basically critiqued a California Voting Rights Act-driven transition to district-based elections, and frankly, the whole bill as ineffective rather than a potential agent for change. And I realized that there wasn't a whole lot of data out there that analyzed the effects of the law and whether or not it has been effective. So there was no way for myself or anybody to say that the columnist was wrong, or even if they were right, and I realized that I wanted to work on actually answering that question. And then when I started at law school, I met Jonah, and we decided to move forward with this as a topic. The most exciting piece for me, as somebody who observes California elections really closely, was just doing that deep dive into California's election law. I observe a lot of processes, and I generally kind of knew how a lot of things unfolded. But kind of seeing in depth what is actually on the books and what the policy rationales for it was really fascinating, and I really enjoyed it.
Davis Rich 02:47
Awesome. Jonah?
Jonah Smith 02:48
Yeah, I mean, I'll echo a lot of what Zach said. I haven't been involved for quite as long, but what really gripped my attention with this issue, and I'm sure we'll get to talking about this some later, is this issue is really pushed to the forefront by recent and more national political developments around redistricting, and that got me really particularly interested thinking about how district-based elections work in California, especially given that under the CVRA, a massive number of local governments have shifted to district-based elections from at-large elections. And I was really curious to see if we had seen the impacts that we would have expected from that, and if we were going to see similar problems we see on the national level with district-based election gerrymandering. And so it was a really exciting process for me going through that and getting to go, with that, dig through some of this granular data and finding plenty of examples on both sides where the CVRA did in fact help improve the diversity and representation in some areas. And of course there are other areas where the CVRA didn't improve representation.
And by far, I think my favorite part of the process has been working with the entire California Law Review team. Our amazing team of associate editors, the Notes editors, Executive, Publishing, everyone across the board at every stage, getting everywhere from substantive critique helping strengthen our arguments to, you know, having help, going and cleaning up those commas and semicolons, figuring out the hyphens. It was a really interesting process to get to go through, both as a student and as an author. That gives a real appreciation for the editorial process and what goes into an academic piece of writing before publication.
Davis Rich 04:25
Great, and now you get to work with Podcast, whether you like it or not.
Jonah Smith 04:29
I was thrilled to get the invite.
Davis Rich 04:30
I think we started talking a little bit about some of the main arguments and some of your key findings in your piece. Can you summarize the main arguments in your Note?
Zach Griggy 04:39
Yeah, our our main argument is that while the CVRA was well intentioned and ultimately has had a net positive effect on Latine and AAPI representation on a lot of Bay Area school boards, there are some areas in the Bay Area, arguably in the state, where the law has had little to no effect, or you know potentially even seen a net decrease in the diversity of local government elected officials. And because of our empirical findings, we recommend reforms to the CVRA that would provide alternatives to at-large and district-based elections, as well as, you know, legal mechanisms for holding local governments accountable when they adopt district plans that ultimately unfairly impact representation for communities of color.
Davis Rich 05:28
I want to talk a little bit about the sort of the mechanisms here and start kind of unwinding these election systems for folks who may not know as much about these election systems. So, Jonah, can you describe an at-large election system compared to a district-based election system, and what the consequences are for each scheme when it comes to representation.
Jonah Smith 05:51
Absolutely, and I'll start by describing each system, and I'll start with the district-based election systems because I suspect they might be more familiar to most people. So, district-based election system is what we might be familiar with in the context of our congressional elections in most states, and certainly in California. So, in California, we have 52 members of the United States House of Representatives, and everybody who lives in California lives in one of those 52 distinct geographic districts. And when, you know, primaries, and then eventually November rolls around, everybody casts one vote in the race for the district that they live, and they're voting also with mostly their neighbors. Right, their district is people they live nearby typically, and we tally up all those votes. And there are essentially 52 separate elections in 52 districts, and no one's voting in multiple. Everyone votes in one and only one. That's a district-based election scheme.
The alternative, or the major alternative, to the district-based elections, are at-large elections. Now, in an at-large election, if we were to have one in the congressional context, it would be as if all 30-plus million Californians voted on all 52 congressmen, whether it be 52 separate races you vote in all of them, or one big race where you get 52 votes for a massive number of people. Everyone in California would have a say over every representative, and that sounds sort of absurd in the context of like California congressional elections and 52 races and, you know, tens of millions of voters. But actually, what you find if you look at the country, certainly in California before the passage of the CVRA, and still now across the United States, at-large election systems are actually dominant in local and municipal elections. So things like school boards, county boards of supervisors, city councils -- those traditionally and by and large still are at-large election schemes where everyone in the jurisdiction that is covered by that governing body will vote for every member of their governing board.
And then the impacts of these election schemes. One big thing that happens with at-large election schemes is if you have, you know, a very polarized voter base. Let's say it's 60-40. That 60% is going to be able to win every single race because they're voting in all of them, they can outvote that 40% every single time. So if we have a situation here where we have the green party and the yellow party, just you know arbitrary colors, and the green party has 60% of the vote, 60% support, they can win all seven city council elections. They can win all 11 board members of a school board or whatever, and they can exert complete control. And that 40% might not get any representation. So, what district-based elections do in this situation is by breaking it out into districts, theoretically, you're going to be able to draw these districts so that both the greens and the yellows are going to be able to get some representation. You know, in an ideal situation, you might be able to mirror pretty closely that 60-40 split, but of course, as we've seen in the national redistricting wars--and you'll see gerrymandering at every level--is that even in a district-based election system, there are ways to draw those lines that aren't necessarily going to give you that same fair representation that you'd expect. It's not going to always be 60-40. Sometimes you can see instances where you know that 60% will still win all the seats, or even where that 40% can become a majority. I know I'm sure we'll get into into more details later, but those are the the major impacts of those election systems.
Davis Rich 09:12
Jonah kind of raised this idea of fair representation, and so I want to talk a little bit about the California Voting Rights Act. Zach, why was the California Voting Rights Act enacted, and what did the law mean for election systems in the state?
Zach Griggy 09:27
So the California Voting Rights Act was enacted to address shortcomings in the Federal Voting Rights Act. One of the main authors of the California Voting Rights Act, Joaquin Avila, wrote a piece in the Southern California Law Review that chronicled a lot of the struggles that plaintiffs faced to bring claims under the Federal Voting Rights Act in California. The Federal Voting Rights Act requires that voters of color show that it is possible to draw a district within the larger jurisdiction where that particular group composes a majority of the electorate, and in a state as diverse as California, there are many places where it's where it's very hard to hit that outright majority that is oftentimes required under, say, Supreme Court jurisprudence, and it posed a pretty significant barrier for plaintiffs to bring claims under the Federal Voting Rights Act. And there were other factors as well, such as like cost recovery for plaintiffs, and potentially like in a couple of particularly high-profile cases, successful defendants trying to recover their costs from plaintiffs that were represented by public interest groups, that ultimately resulted by the mid-1990s in basically no private voting rights litigation in California.
Zach Griggy 10:36
And so the authors of the CVRA tried to address that by changing some of the existing federal voting rights framework. So they removed the requirement, for example, that a particular racial, like plaintiffs of a racial group show that they can draw a district where that group is a majority. That is no longer required to bring a successful claim under the CVRA. They also shifted the cost-recovering mechanism to permit successful plaintiffs to recover their costs from local government jurisdictions, but prohibiting the successful jurisdictions from recovering their costs from plaintiffs. So all in all, it made it a lot easier to bring claims, bring successful claims, and then recover costs from local governments, which then resulted in basically no local government winning a CVRA claim ever, and facing almost certainly high litigation costs, which then made multiple, like we found hundreds, of local government jurisdictions, school boards that transitioned to from at-large elections to district-based elections to avoid potential liability under the CVRA.
Davis Rich 12:11
Can you just touch briefly on the timeline here? I know the California Voting Rights Act becomes law in 2003. How quickly are these changes happening?
Zach Griggy 12:20
There were a couple of test cases brought. First, a case was brought against the city of Modesto, and then also a case brought against the Hanford Joint Union High School District. Both of these jurisdictions are in the Central Valley. Hanford settled, and Modesto chose to fight. During that time, a judge in Stanislaus County, where Modesto is located, struck down the CVRA, and during that time, there were no claims brought. And then, once the Court of Appeals reversed and upheld the law, you saw a trickle of cases. And then, right around the 2010 census, you saw a big spike of cases as a lot of jurisdictions changed from at-large to district elections. And then it kind of petered off in the mid-2010s. And then right after the Palmdale decision, the numbers started ticking back up again and spiked right around 2020 with the 2020 census, where you know you would see upwards of 30-40 jurisdictions changing to district-based elections each year.
Davis Rich 13:26
One assumption that we haven't really covered here is the idea that racial groups are politically cohesive; that voters tend to vote in a bloc, tend to vote similarly to one another. Can you talk a little bit about the political theory that underlies your study here?
Zach Griggy 13:44
Yeah, so the CVRA requires, to prove a violation,proof that voting is racially polarized. I probably should have mentioned that earlier. You know, the traditional Voting Rights Act test requires proof that, you know, we discussed the requirement that you show that voters of color could compose a majority of the electorate in a district. You also have to show that jurisdiction-wide, those voters of color are cohesive; they vote for the same sets of candidates or issues, and then that voting in that jurisdiction is racially polarized. And that is that voters of color of that particular racial group are voting for one set of candidates or one or on one issue in support of it, like a ballot measure, and then voters of another racial group, most often white voters, are voting for a different set of candidates and perhaps against that issue when it comes before them as ballot measure, and consistently outvoting the voters of color to deny those voters an opportunity to elect candidates of choice and influence election outcomes.
Davis Rich 14:50
So, Jonah, you chose to study California school board election systems. I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit about that choice and kind of what you learned about how school districts in the state responded to the enforcement of the California Voting Rights Act?
Jonah Smith 15:08
Yeah. So initially, our choice to study California school board election systems was driven by the fact that, under the CVRA and other state law, that California school boards are able to seek approval from the state government rather than the voters to transition to district-based election systems. And when they do that, they have to fill out this form and they have to, basically, they have to give an explanation. And on that form, when they list reasons, overwhelmingly, they list the California Voting Rights Act as a reason or the threat of litigation under, you know, that law. And so, what that did really helpfully, is it let us, it sort of took away the question mark of like, "Why are these districts transitioning?" It took away that unknown variable of like, "Well, were there other causes of transitions?" We know pretty clearly, because these school boards fill out these waivers, that the answer is the CVRA. And we know that because they said so, and they you know they filed that paperwork with the government that is legally the justification for these shifts. So that's the big "why" we picked school board elections particularly to look at, because the data is out there. And we can pull these waivers and we can find out you know the whens and the whys much easier than some other elections.
And then, so far as what we learned, I think the first thing to keep in mind, as Zach was talking about a few moments ago, is that voting rights litigation, as you know, most litigation, can be exorbitantly expensive. You know, cases that go all the way will oftentimes cost millions of dollars. And at the end of that, if the plaintiffs prevail, then the defendant cities and local governments are going to have to pay those costs. And in the reverse, you know, if the cities are out millions in their own litigation costs and they eventually win, then the litigation goes away, but they're still paying. So you know this litigation is certainly a lose-lose scenario for local governments. That's one big takeaway. And if a local government loses, they're on the hook for both their own costs and plaintiffs' costs. Whereas plaintiffs win, their own costs are paid. So you couple that with the fact that no local government to date has won a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. It creates a really, really strong incentive for avoiding litigation, and that, be it as it may, that might be from proactively and preemptively transitioning district-based election systems, or it could be from receiving demand letters and changing systems under direct threat of litigation. Even if the system doesn't necessarily actually include any sort of violation under the law, it's just not worth litigating.
So of course, the rational response from many local governments is to immediately transition to district-based election systems with those demand letters. And some local governments like the Novato Unified School District transitioned before they even received a demand letter. They saw the risk of potentially receiving one and decided to obviate that risk entirely by transitioning to district-based election systems, which, due to a carveout under the law, district-based election systems aren't subject to the California Voting Rights Act. You can have any kind of district-based election system you want, and the California Voting Rights Act says that's okay under this law. There's no cause of action that you can bring under the CVRA against a district-based election. And so our big takeaway: we found that between 2003 and 2022, over 90% of school districts seeking permission from the California State Board of Education to transition these district-based election systems cited the CVRA and fear of litigation as a reason. And that really is showing that aside from the impact on actual representation, certainly in terms of impacting election systems, that the CVRA has been a massive, massive agent in change of moving away from at-large election systems to district-based election systems.
Davis Rich 18:42
Wow, it's really striking to hear about the power and the incentives that this law set up. And I know we're going to circle back to the fact that the CVRA exempts district-based elections from scrutiny. I know that was a big part of your Note that I want to get back to. I want to talk a little bit more about your methodology and your findings. So your analysis really focuses on descriptive representation for Latine and AAPI communities here in Bay Area school boards. So Zach, can you describe the methodology you used to analyze this law's impact and what you found as it relates to Bay Area school boards?
Zach Griggy 19:25
A key focus of our Note was to assess the impacts of the California Voting Rights Act. And one of the ways that we wanted to do that was assess "How are communities of color getting represented on school boards? Are people of color getting elected to school boards in the Bay Area as a result of the transition to district-based elections?" And what we tried to do to quantify that is track the number of Latine and AAPI trustees serving on Bay Area school boards, both before the California Voting Rights Act made any Bay Area school districts change to district-based elections, and then after the most recent elections at the time in 2024. And we also tried to compare the number of Latine and AAPI trustees that were serving on the boards during those two times on school boards that both transitioned to district-based elections compared to boards that stayed at-large. So to that end, we collected the names of school board members that were elected in the four years prior to 2010 and the four years prior to 2025, and used surname matching using a data set provided by the Census Bureau to try to calculate the number of trustees that are AAPI or Latine, and then compare in jurisdictions that stayed at-large versus jurisdictions that transitioned to district-based elections, "How has representation of those communities changed?"
And what we found is that, in both school districts, in both sets of school districts, there were increases in representation of both communities. But that in districts that transitioned from at-large elections to district-based elections, that increase was much higher. And it was particularly high in districts that also saw a significant amount of demographic change that went from being majority white in 2010 to being majority non-white by 2023, those districts saw the highest change when they transitioned to district-based elections.
We also found that in jurisdictions that were already majority non-white and already highly diverse, that the effects of converting to district-based elections were relatively little. In some places, you saw very little change when you converged from at large to district-based elections, and it kind of makes sense a little intuitively. Suppose you have a school district where voters of color are already a majority district-wide. In an at-large election, theoretically, those voters would comprise a majority of the electorate and could elect every single seat on the school board. But when that district transitions to district-based elections, it's possible that maybe one or two trustee areas on the school board are majority white. And so you could go from a district where voters of color are potentially electing all of the seats on the school board to a district where some of the trustee areas are majority white, and voters of color are not electing every single seat.
Davis Rich 22:40
So when a local government decides to move from an at-large election system to a district-based election system, they have to draw a map of districts, and your Note describes how local governments and political subdivisions retain this discretion to draw the maps as they see fit. So Zach, how did this map-drawing power affect the potential political power of Latine and AAPI voters?
Zach Griggy 23:10
One of the important things to touch on, and Jonah mentioned it earlier, is that as currently written, the California Voting Rights Act doesn't regulate district-based elections. So it can force jurisdictions to transition from at-large elections to district-based elections, but then provides no remedy if the districts themselves turn out to be discriminatory. That remedy comes from the Federal Voting Rights Act, which then runs into the issues that I discussed earlier. At the same time, that lack of regulation led to a lot of incumbent protection gerrymanders, because when you switch from at-large elections, where theoretically anybody in the city can run, to district-based elections, where you have to live in a particular area, it creates incentives for incumbent officeholders to try to draw districts so that everybody gets a place to land after the district maps get drawn. And that led to some pretty brazen gerrymanders.
Now, there was one city in Northern California that went so far out of their way to protect incumbents that voters sued, and a Superior Court judge said that it was about as uncompact as geographically possible, and called the lines "absurd." But ultimately, the judge upheld the map because the CVRA does not regulate the districts that were drawn. The legislature then tried to step in and passed a law called the Fair Maps Act, and it addressed a lot of the concerns that we've raised here. For example, it tried to enact stricter criteria to govern how maps are drawn. And in that city, it had a positive effect. The city had an independent redistricting commission in 2022 that then redrew the city's lines and kept a more diverse, low-income downtown area together that had previously been split between all four of the city's districts.
But in other areas of the state, the Fair Maps Act has proven pretty toothless. In Riverside County, for example, voters and several state legislators representing the area complained that the Board of Supervisors discriminated against Latine voters because they packed Latine voters into one supervisor district when community organizations showed that it would have been possible to create two districts that allowed Latine voters to elect candidates of their choice. And voters brought a lawsuit and then ultimately settled without changing the map. Similarly, a lot of jurisdictions across the state have basically maintained their previous decades' map, sometimes over the objections of residents. So, for example, in Fresno County, voters complained that the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors there made minimum changes in order to protect incumbents and, you know, some would say, keep Republicans in the majority on the board. But, to date, no lawsuit has been brought challenging that plan. And ultimately, the Fair Maps Act has fundamentally failed to prevent that kind of incumbency protection during redistricting. And what we found in the Bay Area, going back to your question about the impacts on Latine and AAPI communities, is that a lot of school districts failed to draw districts that gave Latine and AAPI voters an opportunity to influence election outcomes or elect candidates of choice.
Davis Rich 26:44
Okay, Jonah. So we've talked about some of the limitations of the California Voting Rights Act, but thankfully, you and Zach provided some alternatives, some recommendations, for how to reform the current approach. Could you walk us through what those alternatives are?
Jonah Smith 27:01
Absolutely. And I think as we've highlighted, sort of the the biggest glaring issue with the California Voting Rights Act is that it really exempts district-based elections from its purview, or more accurately to say, actually, it only applies to at-large election systems, is actually, the verbiage it uses. And so you know, I think our most major reform would be to remove the exemption from any type of election system that's having a discriminatory impact, especially because I believe that is what the law originally was targeting and what we should be targeting. Rather than sort of these forms of elections, it should be the discriminatory impact. And by doing so, that will allow a variety of local governments to consider with, you know, lesser risk of litigation, other methods of election that are actually going to be tailored towards minimizing discrimination, minimizing inaccurate representation, because that will be what people look at to find liability rather than what is the actual technical form of your election.
Jonah Smith 27:57
So as a big, overarching, "What should we do to change the law?" is to make sure that what we're targeting is discrimination, not the form of an election. And two things that we believe this would enable--and I believe this is probably a recommendation that will apply more at the local government level--are transitions to modified at-large election systems. So two that we talk about in our Note are cumulative and limited voting. So in these situations, you're sort of in the at-large framework. It is, all the school board members are being voted on by everyone. Everyone who lives in Berkeley will vote on the whole of the school board. But instead of everyone voting in every race, you'll vote a little differently.
In limited voting, let's imagine you have five school board members up for election. Every voter will go into the booth, and they'll get a list of all those members of the school board. But they only get to cast a number of votes less than five. Let's call it three. And so every voter will be able to cast three votes for three of however many people are running. Then the top vote getters will get votes, or the top vote getters, rather, will win their seats. And the impact that this has is it almost allows you to draw your own districts, not geographically, but by who you vote with. You can arrange your votes in a certain manner, and it limits the impact or the influence of, you know, going back to our 60-40 example, it limits the impact of that 60% because they can't all vote in every single race. They can all vote three times, but if they all vote three times for the same three people, that still leaves the other two seats open for everyone else. And of course that gives rise to, you know, a variety of coordination and strategic issues. But it at least makes it possible and brings it within the power of a minority group to seek their own representation rather than being consistently outvoted.
And a similar, but slightly different take on that is going to be cumulative voting. In cumulative voting, let's assume we've got these same five board member or five board seats up for election. Every voter gets five votes, and they can put them on anyone they want in this election, including five votes on one person. And so what that does is it would allow a community in a political minority to all put their five votes on the same one candidate, or maybe they split them three-two or two-two- and one. But they can split them in such a way that they can concentrate their impact on races and the candidates that matter most to them. Whereas, you know, if you have this 60%, this political majority, they can vote once in all five elections. But if the political minority is strategic and they are voting and concentrating their votes, they are still able to find the representation that they seek. The major benefit of these systems is that they work in the at-large framework of everyone is voting in the same major election. There is no map to be drawn. It is immune to gerrymandering because there are no district lines beyond district lines, right? We're not talking about district lines. We're not worried about them. And so, by going beyond these district lines, we are taking away power from ill-intentioned legislators and local governments who might be motivated to draw maps in a way that benefits people who are their ideological similars, that keeps themselves or their friends in power, or empowers their communities, and sort of entrenches the current political scheme. It creates an electoral system where everyone is in control of their own vote and representation, and it's not subject to the political wills and decision making of, you know, the local board who is setting the rules of their own election.
And this has happened, or rather, some localities have tried to make this happen, have explored transitions to cumulative and unlimited voting systems, including my hometown of Mission Viejo. And they were stopped for a number of reasons--and we discuss this in the Note--one of them being the current, you know, landscape of state law is just not friendly to these voting systems. There's sort of gaps and holes. It's not forbidden, but it's not considered. And the Secretary of State doesn't have criteria upon which they can certify voting systems. So even if a locality wanted to do it, they can't right now because the way we count votes in the state, it does not compute. Right, it'll throw back a 404 error essentially. This is not an ideological stand that any legislator has taken. It's just sort of this oversight that came with the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, where we thought, you know, district-based elections are going to be the way forward, so we're going to move to those. And of course, in the intervening 25 years or so, national redistricting wars, we really see that weakness. And so I think that enabling local governments to really explore their options with alternative voting systems, and maybe ones that we didn't talk about, we haven't thought yet, and maybe no one's thought up of yet. But it really it puts that back to the local governments to find something that works in their unique local scenarios, rather than sort of, you know, aiming for this one-size-fit all solution that is really, I think, subject to lots of abuse.
Davis Rich 32:46
Before we wrap up, I just have to ask you both one more question about student Notes. What advice would you give to students who are interested in writing and publishing a Note?
Jonah Smith 32:56
Right off the bat, I would say, and I think Zach will agree with me on this, is that a potential student author should really make sure that they're finding something that they're genuinely interested in learning about, researching, and writing about. The process is really, really rewarding, but it also comes from a lot, a lot of work, and I think it really helps us get through this work that it's it's something that we are really, truly interested in, both on the research level and the impacts that the CVRA is having currently, and, you know where we can possibly move in the future. So finding something you're interested in has been a returning source of energy, a well of energy I can consult, you know. When the days get long and the edits get intense, it's much easier to keep circling back on these issues when it's something you really and genuinely care about and are interested in.
Zach Griggy 33:42
I've been interested in local government elections for quite some time. I actually drew a couple of maps when my hometown got hit with some CVRA claims and they switched district elections. I drew a couple of maps there, and following local government elections and making sure the lines are fair has been a longtime passion of mine. Sorry, I know my monotone voice makes that a little less obvious, but I've really enjoyed being involved in local government redistricting decisions and fighting for fair maps. And being involved in doing so much research in this and learning so much has been so rewarding, to Jonah's point. The other thing that I recommend authors to keep in mind is just be patient. It takes time, finding the source that you need to support a specific proposition takes time, and responding to the edits that you get from your editors and the thoughtful comments that you get takes time. Your first draft will not be perfect. Your second draft probably also won't be perfect. Maybe not even the third. But you just got to keep going, and hopefully it will get to a point that you're happy with it, and your editors are happy with it --perhaps more importantly. And it will be worth it in the end, particularly, as Jonah said, if it's something that you're passionate about and that you enjoy reading about. Being patient and being passionate are, I think, the two most important things.
Jonah Smith 35:20
And perhaps one last addition. It's okay and probably encouraged to ask for help and feedback at all stages in this process. Zach and I got feedback from many of his mentors in the field, you know, prior to submitting this, and even during the editorial process. And of course, we would never have been able to make this happen without the amazing work done by the super dedicated CLR editorial team. So at any point in the process, there are people you can reach out to for help, for thoughts. If you can't figure out how to phrase something or how to bridge this gap, or you're not sure if something makes sense or needs more support, this is not something you ever should have to do on your own. And to reach out and find the people who can help you can also be a real big boon.
Davis Rich 36:04
Great. Well, thank you, Zach and Jonah. Hopefully, this podcast and your advice spur maybe one author to write a Note. I just want to conclude with some final thoughts. You know, it's a big election year coming up in California again. I know our conversation today has gotten me thinking a lot about voting rights and about national issues when it comes to elections and voting. What do each of you hope that a reader of your Note or a listener of this podcast takes away from your project?
Jonah Smith 36:34
Vote, vote, vote, vote. We do all this writing. We do all this research. We have all these opinions on election systems. And the fact of the matter is, those elections only matter if we vote. And the only one who can cast your vote is you. So you know, when November rolls around, whether it be, you know, dropping your ballot in the mail or in a drop box or going down to your voting location, whatever it is, please vote. No matter what the election system is, you're not going to be heard if you don't vote. And at least if you vote, you're going to have a chance.
Zach Griggy 37:01
I think the other thing that I hope people take away from our Note is, you know, a lot, Jonah said, a lot is said about like the national redistricting wars, who's going to control Congress, and, you know, how do the district lines shape that. But a lot of important decisions are made at the local level. What kids learn is set by a school board. Which roads get paved is arguably going to be finally approved by a city council or a county commission. And our Note is focused on those local races, the school boards, that matter. And I hope that our Note helps reinforce that voting rights at the local level, where the decisions that impact people the most, voting rights there matters too. That local races matter too. And that no level of government should be beyond the reach of the people, or discriminatory-that all levels of government up and down your ballot, as Jonah said, when you're voting, matter and are worthy of legislation to make sure that people's votes matter.
Davis Rich 38:16
Well, thank you both. I think those are both really important reminders as we head into another election season. Jonah and Zach, thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and thank you for your contribution to the scholarship.
Jonah Smith 38:30
Of course, thank you for having us.
Zach Griggy 38:32
Thank you for having us.
Davis Rich 38:34
Thank you for listening to this episode of Source Collect. If you would like to read Zach and Jonah's Note, you can find it californialawreview.org. This episode was recorded in August 2026. For updates on new episodes and articles, please follow us on Instagram @californialawreview. A complete list of our socials is available on our website. Lastly, you can find a list of the editors who worked on this episode of the podcast in the show notes. See you next time.
