Monopoly Politics, Southern-Style

By Rob Richie

Vol. 20, No. 3, 1998 pp. 23-24

Just who decides legislative elections in the United States? The voters cast ballots, but most Americans, most of the time, experience “no choice” legislative elections. They live in political monopolies that essentially are one-party fiefdoms created in redistricting to produce exactly such lopsided results. With voter turnout shrinking to one of the world’s lowest levels-a 1997 study ranked the United States 103rd in voter turnout among 131 democracies in national elections since World War II-and with alienation from the political process increasing rapidly, particularly among the young, it is high time to consider changing the rules that create and sustain these political monopolies.

Although the South’s politics have undergone dramatic changes in recent decades, the region still provides the nation’s most damning evidence of non-competitive elections and their impact on voter turnout. In 1996, every state in the region ranked among the bottom twenty in voter turnout in U.S. House elections. Of the Southern states, only Arkansas finished among the top twenty in competitive congressional House races (as measured by average victory margins). Six of the seven Southern states with partisan state legislative elections finished among the bottom ten states in the uncontested races, with more than half of races having only one major party candidate.

Turnout and competitiveness are even lower in mid-term elections. In 1994, eight Southern states were among the nine lowest in the nation in voter turnout. No Southern state that year had more than 55 percent of its state legislative seats contested by both major parties, with four states having more than three in five state legislative races won without contest. Turnout in 1998 promises to be even worse; nearly half of the region’s U.S. House races will be uncontested.

The current U.S. election system often produces a legislature with the distortions of a funhouse mirror, poorly reflecting the full spectrum of voters’ opinions and interests. Only 1 percent of the U.S. Senate is black or Latino despite those groups making up more than 25 percent of the nation’s population. In the Deep South, running from South Carolina to Louisiana, Republican candidates won nearly 70 percent of House seats with only 55 percent of votes. Women hold only one of these 36 seats.

Non-competitive elections and distorted representation arise from the winner-take-all election system. Single-member district elections in majority black areas have been the route to fair representation for black voters throughout the South. Rather than returning to at-large systems-winner-take-all elections held in multi-seat districts usually exaggerate distorted representation and dilute black electoral opportunity-non-winner-take-all election systems should be given a serious look.

The principle behind these “proportional representation” (PR) systems is that any grouping of like-minded voters should win legislative seats in proportion to its share of the popular vote. Whereas the current winner-take-all principle awards 100 percent of the representation to a 50.1 percent majority, a PR system allows voters in a minority to win a share of representation. PR may be familiar to those who have closely followed presidential elections, as all Democratic presidential primaries and caucuses and many Republican primaries allocate convention seats by proportional representation.

To convert to a form of PR, five one-seat districts might be combined into a single five-seat district. A candidate could win with the strong support of 20 percent of voters in this district. A slate of candidates with the support of a narrow majority of voters would elect three of five seats.

Proportional systems are used in most mature democracies. Of the thirty-six major, full-fledged democracies around the world, only the United States and Canada do not use a PR system to elect at least one of their national legislatures.

There are both partisan and non-partisan forms of PR; more than 200

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localities in the United States in fact use one of three non-partisan systems: limited voting, cumulative voting and choice voting (e.g., single transferable vote). Some PR systems allow very small political forces to win seats, while others set higher thresholds that limit proportionality. Some PR systems eliminate all guaranteed representation of different geographic areas; others allow voters to balance geographic representation with representation of their other communities of interest.

Lowering the percentage of votes necessary to win representation may cause concern about representation of extremists. The experience of PR around the world, however, suggests ways to find reasonable compromises between extremely low thresholds of representation (only one percent in Italy and Israel before those nations raised their thresholds this decade) and the winner-take-all threshold of 50 percent. More fundamentally, for every American voter who wants to elect an extremist, there are probably five to ten voters currently denied an opportunity to elect a more centrist representative because they live in a non-competitive district.

South Africa’s first all-race elections in 1994 are revealing. Despite that nation’s bitter racial history and a low threshold in which 1/400th of voters could elect their own representative, the two leading parties won more than 80 percent of the votes with multi-racial candidate slates and messages of inclusion. Radical parties appealing only to blacks or to whites won fewer than 5 percent of votes and just a handful of seats.

Closer to home, Illinois’ experience with cumulative voting for state legislative elections from 1870 to 1980 is reassuring: as the Chicago Tribune editorialized in 1995 in calling for cumulative voting’s restoration, “[Cumulative voting] produced some of the best and brightest in Illinois politics.”

Given a likely record-low voter turnout in 1998 and a Congress that increasingly puts short-term political considerations ahead of long-term policy interests, it is encouraging to see signs of serious interest in proportional representation. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has introduced legislation to give states the option to use PR systems for House elections. The Southern Regional Council, Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy, the Center for Voting and Democracy (CVD) are working together to promote education about PR systems. Law review articles are examining PR systems as a potential remedy in voting rights cases.

For more information on these developments and a special report Electing the People’s House: 1998, see the Center for Voting and Democracy web site (http://www.fairvote.org) or contact CVD at: (202) 828-3062.

Rob Richie is executive director of The Center for Voting and Democracy, based in Washington, D.C.

Winning Fair Representation with Alternative Voting Systems

By Rob Richie

Vol. 22, No. 4, 2000 pp. 22-24

Experts suggest that some 95 percent of black representation in the next decade will be won or lost in the upcoming redistricting. Without substantial numbers of black voters in districts, very few black candidates will win; the U.S. Senate is the most notorious example of the negative impact of racial block voting-with its lack of black or Latino members a direct consequence of no state having a black or Latino majority.

Dependence on redistricting to provide representation to black people and other communities of color is based on three factors: white voters’ general preference for white candidates; the fact that people of color are in the minority in most areas; and the general use in the United States of “winner-take-all” methods of voting in which a 50.1 percent majority in a given constituency wins all representation in its area.

Policy makers have few short-term means to end racism, but through redistricting they have the power to turn blacks into majorities in certain electoral districts. They also have the power to address the third barrier to fair representation: winner-take-all elections. Systems that provide more complete representation of the electorate can allow more racial minorities to elect candidates. In such “proportional” systems, like-minded groupings of voters can pool their votes from across a constituency to elect candidates in accordance with their voting strength. A 50.1 percent electoral majority remains well-positioned to win the majority of seats, but it cannot shut out a substantial political minority. With proportional systems, many voters gain new power to elect the representation for which they currently are deprived due to their minority status in their area. As American society grows increasingly diverse and communities of interest increasingly develop along non-geographic lines, proportional voting systems are drawing even more attention. Freeing more voters to define their representation with their votes has fundamental appeal.

It also works. When Cincinnati used a proportional system to elect its nine-member city council from 1925 to 1955, a cohesive grouping of voters comprising 10 percent of the electorate could elect a seat. At least one black candidate consistently was elected despite blacks making up well under 20 percent of the population, and both major parties pursued the black vote in efforts to control the council. Today in Peoria, Illinois, where blacks are a fifth of the population, black candidates have won one of five citywide seats since a proportional plan was adopted before the 1991 elections.

The most dramatic recent example of the impact of proportional voting comes from Texas. In May 2000, the Amarillo Independent School District for the first time used a proportional system called cumulative voting to elect seats to its school board. Blacks and Latinos in Amarillo together comprise nearly a quarter of the city’s population, but no black or Latino candidate had won a seat on the school board in decades. Instituted to settle a voting rights lawsuit involving the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and the NAACP, cumulative voting had an immediate impact. Both a black candidate and a Latino candidate won seats with strong support in their respective communities, voter turnout increased four times over the most recent school board

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election, and all parties in the voting rights settlement expressed satisfaction with the new system.

Cumulative voting and limited voting also have been used in nearly two dozen Alabama localities for a decade in the wake of a sweeping decision in a voting rights case. Analyses of these Alabama elections demonstrate that they have boosted turnout and increased black representation as much as likely would have occurred with single-member districts.

Cumulative voting was first introduced to many Americans in 1993 during the controversy over cumulative voting advocate Lani Guinier’s nomination to head the civil rights division of the Department of Justice. That a generally conservative city like Amarillo would settle a voting rights case with cumulative voting is only one example of how proportional systems-specifically, cumulative voting, choice voting, and limited voting, which are based on voting for candidates rather than party-based systems as used in South Africa and most European nations-have evolved to be credible alternatives for empowerment.

In 1995, Texas Governor George W. Bush signed legislation to allow school districts to adopt cumulative voting and limited voting, and more than fifty Texas jurisdictions have settled voting rights cases with cumulative voting.

Other recent examples of how proportional systems are gaining attention include:

• In 1999 North Carolina Congressman Melvin Watt
  

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  introduced the States’ Choice of Voting Systems Act (HR 1173) to remove a 1967 requirement that states use single-member districts for U.S. House elections. Those testifying in favor of the bill at a hearing included the Department of Justice and Republican Congressman Tom Campbell.

• In 1998, Judge David Coar ordered Chicago Heights, Illinois, to adopt cumulative voting to assist black and Latino voters in elections to the city council and park board. Cumulative voting was used for more than a century to elect the state’s House of Representatives, where black legislators had early and significant electoral successes; among those backing its return include Senate minority leader Emil Jones, former governor Jim Edgar, and U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.
• As of 2000, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has ultimately pre-cleared proportional plans in states covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in every jurisdiction seeking to institute one. In 1999, the DOJ backed Judge Coar’s order of cumulative voting in Chicago Heights and denied pre-clearance to New York City’s plan to replace choice voting for local school board elections; choice voting had elected a significantly higher percentage of racial minorities to school boards than have been elected in the city’s other legislative bodies.
• A National Black Caucus of State Legislators task force in 1998 found strong interest among black legislators in seeing how proportional systems might assist negotiations in redistricting. The National Conference of Black Political Scientists endorsed proportional systems in 1999, while the Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark-Atlanta University is pursuing ambitious educational outreach about proportional systems to black elected officials and historically black colleges and universities. National and state affiliates of US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), Common Cause, National Organization for Women (NOW), and the League of Women Voters have adopted positions in favor of proportional representation. In 2000 the League voted to pursue a national study of voting systems-its first national study in a decade.

The goal of proportional systems is simple: providing means to allow fair and realistic opportunities for citizens to elect individuals of their own choosing. While no cure-all, they are a practical, tested approach to winning fair representation.

Rob Richie is executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy. For more information about the Center and proportional voting systems, visit www.fairvote.org.