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More than forty years after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a fundamental question remains unanswered: although all citizens have an equal right to the ballot, do all citizens enjoy equal access to the ballot box? That is, are voting precincts in predominantly low-income and non-white neighborhoods less visible, less stable, harder to find, and harder to navigate than voting precincts in high-income and predominantly white neighborhoods? If so, does the lower quality result in lower levels of voting, all other things equal? The authors' analysis indicates that the quality of polling places varies across the diverse neighborhoods of Los Angeles and that the quality of polling places influences voter turnout. Low-income and minority communities tended to have "lower quality" precincts, which tended to depress voter turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homeownership's importance in America's culture and economy raises the possibility that status as a homeowner or renter constitutes a core aspect of personal identity, on par with race and ethnicity. A survey from the socially diverse Los Angeles region provides a unique data set to test the possibility that homeownership exaggerates or mitigates social cleavages, particularly those based on race or ethnicity. The analysis reveals renters as less upbeat than homeowners regarding a variety of opinion measures and distinctly divided in their opinions along racial and ethnic lines. Among homeowners, however, the authors find a confluence of opinion across racial and ethnic lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A decade after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, half of residents surveyed report they anticipate another riot. Pessimism concerning the prospect of future riots is associated with negative assessments of life in Los Angeles--most notably negative perceptions of racial issues in the city. Demographic attributes including income, educational attainment, and duration of residency in Los Angeles are also associated with expectations of future riots. Racial or ethnic identity, however, have no appreciable director mediating impact on expectations of future riots, a striking finding in light of the central place race occupies in social science research and public discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]