Today’s Good News: Claim Democracy 3: PR Not A Pipe Dream
In a lively session about proportional representation (PR) and ranked choice voting (also known as IRV, instant runoff voting, or STV, single transferable vote), it became clear that more people in the “democracy movement” get these issues than I would have guessed. First of all, I learned that PR has a longer and broader history in the US than is generally known. It was the norm in many places from early in the 20th century until about 1967. STV (single transferable vote) existed in 22 cities, and had been a response to blatant local corruption. Apparently the powers that be wanted to get rid of it because it did what it was supposed to do, and that’s put more people at the table. A Black Communist was elected in NY, for example.
As panelist Barbara Klein of Arizona said, “Nothing will change until you have different people sitting in those seats, and that won’t change without changing single-member districts.”
Panelist Krist Novoselic had the sensible idea to fuse “IRV” and”PR” into one concept called ranked choice voting, which is about one thing: voter choice. When you’re voting for a single office or in a single-member district, it ensures that the winner must have majority support. When you’re voting in a multi-member district, it ensures that minority interests get representation relative to their strength in the population. (My idea: call it voter power.)
FairVote’s Rob Richie was quoted as saying that PR/IRV raises voter participation more than any other reform.
It seemed that one big difficulty with getting these reforms done is that transforming single-member districts into multiple-member districts would require a constitutional amendment at states. (I’m not sure if that meant to get it to happen at a state or federal level.) There is, of course, a growing list of cities that practice IRV, and in RI and CO, legislators have introduced bills to allow STV.
November 22nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Thanks for the very encouraging comments.
The immediate — and very real — prospects for proportional voting are at the city and county level. Voters in Davis, CA, for example, supported PR in an advisory vote a year ago.
The good news about this is (1) while there are restrictions in some state constitutions and statutes, home rule charters are not usually affected by them, and (2) local government experience can be a good way to demonstrate the advantages of PR. The corresponding bad news is that we are still a long way away from PR at the national level.
The constitutional situation varies from state to state, although I suspect that most do have single-member districts for the state legislature written into their constitutions. At the federal level, Congress could allow states to use PR for their House delegations by repealing a 1967 law that requires single-member districts (the federal Constitution does not require them, except in states with only one representative). The federal Senate, of course, cannot be elected proportionally without major Constitutional change.
November 24th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Bob, it is very helpful. I wanted to mention that Peoria, IL, has a good system for its City Council: half at-large seats and half district seats. It would be good to know if any states do NOT have a const. requirement for single member districts. Do we have any idea how many and which states had PR House delegations before 67? How did such a regressive law get passed in the middle of the left-wing 60’s?
November 25th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
The 1967 law was actually a companion to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The problem is that, without proportional methods, multi-seat districts are actually worse for minority voters than single-seat districts. This is usually called “block voting” or “vote for N” and is very common in towns, small cities, school boards, etc. Historically white governments in the South had used block voting as a way to disenfranchise blacks.
Congress in 1967 could have, but didn’t, permit proportional methods like STV and semi-proportional methods like cumulative voting (as in Peoria), while prohibiting block voting. There was indeed a lot of progressive activity in the 60’s, but electoral reform wasn’t part of it then. So I don’t think this distinction wasn’t really debated in Congress.