Two women standing side by side are interviewed in an outdoor space.

On the Evolution of Voter Access in California

Alisa Belinkoff Katz, senior fellow at the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy and associate director of the Los Angeles Initiative, and Sonja Diaz, founding director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, spoke to ABC7 News about the complicated history of voter suppression in California. Despite major strides in voting access, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a report co-authored by Belinkoff Katz found that California voters do not reflect the diversity of its people. She described the origins of the “exclusion of low-income people from the vote,” starting with Chinese immigrants and some Native Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries. Diaz added that some people are still being left out today because of the color of their skin, their class or their ZIP code, as well as redistricting decisions that dilute their voting power. 


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