Illuminating lessons from Illinois’ 110-year history with cumulative voting -- more bipartisanship, less polarization, more voter choice, better representation
The emerging Equalitarian Party - https://www.usep.net/ - ranks election reforms as its highest priority tenet. It realizes that without election reforms, no third party - no matter what the platform - will grow to be competitive with the duopoly.
Hi Steven- I know some people that are interested in reviving these forms of PR at the state and national level. A couple questions- I have tried to volunteer with FairVote in my state. The initial volunteer group was not responsive and they were more focused on RCV implementation at the local city and town level. Furthermore, it seems like Fairvote is pretty committed to STV as evidenced by the Fair Representation Act. In talking to a Fairvote rep, the likliehood of Fair Rep Act becoming an agenda item (to build clout within Congress) is ten years at best (to coincide with the new census and new redistricting). So I have two questions- is FairVote open to considering other types of PR at the national level (i.e. Party List) which has been tested on larger populations (i.e. Germany) and might be less erratic than STV? Is there a way to build grassroots support for PR...tackling a state legislature? My experience with Fairvote is the chapters are not doing enough to promote PR but I could be wrong.
Hi Am Benjamin, what state do you live in? There are other groups in many states working on electoral system reform. If you look at the website of Rank The Vote, it has links to state chapters. Also, do you know the group Fix Our House? They also are pushing for PR to elect US House. I can't speak for FV, but I think it would support whatever form of PR has a chance of being adopted. As an org, it has made Proportional Ranked Choice Voting (also called STV) a priority.
Do we know what Saul Alinsky thought about 3 seat quasi-PR? Are there studies on what spillover effects if any there were onto national politics? As I understand from Dr Santucci, the 70s were hard on Illinois state politics. The rule got corrupted some.
Typically, the general elections were not competitive, as I understand it...
I was thinking one cd both merge a state senate & state house of reps, have the reps votes be worth 1/3rd of the state senate and have a single vote for both, so it'd be CLPR and use the Hare quota so there'd be real uncertainty as to who'd win the third state reps seat.
Illinois's Cumulative Voting was a little more than just single voting in a three-seat district. It gave each voter three votes but allowed him or her to pile the votes on to one candidate.
so therefore a voting block of about 25 percent of voters (as Stephen indicates) could elect one member if they were organized or if only one minority candidate was in running so that minority vote was not dispersed.
so that is its weakness - its best hope was to prevent majority making clean sweep of district seats and to ensure one seat for the minority under good conditions.
Single voting such as we see in Vanuatu elections shows that a variety of parties competes in the district and usually most-popular parties take one seat in a district, sometimes two.
so not proportional -
ranked votes would make it more fair to both small and large parties
but Vanuatu's Single Voting has some advantages over Illinois's CV.
for one thing there are fewer votes to count -- only one per voter.
The emerging Equalitarian Party - https://www.usep.net/ - ranks election reforms as its highest priority tenet. It realizes that without election reforms, no third party - no matter what the platform - will grow to be competitive with the duopoly.
Hi Steven- I know some people that are interested in reviving these forms of PR at the state and national level. A couple questions- I have tried to volunteer with FairVote in my state. The initial volunteer group was not responsive and they were more focused on RCV implementation at the local city and town level. Furthermore, it seems like Fairvote is pretty committed to STV as evidenced by the Fair Representation Act. In talking to a Fairvote rep, the likliehood of Fair Rep Act becoming an agenda item (to build clout within Congress) is ten years at best (to coincide with the new census and new redistricting). So I have two questions- is FairVote open to considering other types of PR at the national level (i.e. Party List) which has been tested on larger populations (i.e. Germany) and might be less erratic than STV? Is there a way to build grassroots support for PR...tackling a state legislature? My experience with Fairvote is the chapters are not doing enough to promote PR but I could be wrong.
Hi Am Benjamin, what state do you live in? There are other groups in many states working on electoral system reform. If you look at the website of Rank The Vote, it has links to state chapters. Also, do you know the group Fix Our House? They also are pushing for PR to elect US House. I can't speak for FV, but I think it would support whatever form of PR has a chance of being adopted. As an org, it has made Proportional Ranked Choice Voting (also called STV) a priority.
Do we know what Saul Alinsky thought about 3 seat quasi-PR? Are there studies on what spillover effects if any there were onto national politics? As I understand from Dr Santucci, the 70s were hard on Illinois state politics. The rule got corrupted some.
Typically, the general elections were not competitive, as I understand it...
I was thinking one cd both merge a state senate & state house of reps, have the reps votes be worth 1/3rd of the state senate and have a single vote for both, so it'd be CLPR and use the Hare quota so there'd be real uncertainty as to who'd win the third state reps seat.
Illinois's Cumulative Voting was a little more than just single voting in a three-seat district. It gave each voter three votes but allowed him or her to pile the votes on to one candidate.
so therefore a voting block of about 25 percent of voters (as Stephen indicates) could elect one member if they were organized or if only one minority candidate was in running so that minority vote was not dispersed.
so that is its weakness - its best hope was to prevent majority making clean sweep of district seats and to ensure one seat for the minority under good conditions.
Single voting such as we see in Vanuatu elections shows that a variety of parties competes in the district and usually most-popular parties take one seat in a district, sometimes two.
so not proportional -
ranked votes would make it more fair to both small and large parties
but Vanuatu's Single Voting has some advantages over Illinois's CV.
for one thing there are fewer votes to count -- only one per voter.