[EL] Easy to keep track of state rep candidates when only 1 of them

[Rob Richie]

Good to see Rick link today too an important article by by Josh Goldman on
multi-seat state legislative districts called "it's hard to keep track of
your state senator when there are six of them in one district."

Of course there's a "reverse headline" that goes with the dominant use of
winner-take-all, single-member districts: "it's easy to keep track of state
legislative candidates when there is only one of them. " Over the past dozen
years, we've had nearly 40% of state legislative seats won without a major
party opponent -- effectively uncontested.That number can rise well above
50% in some states. Most remaining seats are contested only in name -- far
more due to the winner-take-all rule than how district lines were drawn.

In the international context (and a growing number of US cities), the key
question for multi-seat district would be the decision to use a
winner-take-all or a non-winner-take-all system.In our country's generally
non-adventurous mimicry of other states and past rules, state legislative
and U.S. House elections in multi-seat districts have overwhelmingly used
winner-take-all, but that's not required. Illinois' history with cumulative
voting in its 3-seat state house districts from 1870 to 1980 was quite
different, for example, as nearly every district always had shared
representation -- lots of thoughtful IL leaders from that era (it was
replaced in 1980) deeply regret losing it.

A few years back there was a fascinating report on cumulative voting in
Illinois from a task force co-chaired by former Illinois Republican governor
Jim Edgar and former Democratic Congressman and White House counsel Abner
Mikva. See links to the report, a video with Mikva and an example of what
such districts can look like here

http://archive.fairvote.org/op_eds/execsum.pdf -- see summary on page 13
http://www.youtube.com/user/fairvote#p/u/8/oavixTnQ4eA  - short video
http://www.fairvote.org/louisiana-redistricting-a-better-method - Louisiana
example

- Rob Richie

#######

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=585952

  THURSDAY, JULY 07, 2011
It's hard to keep track of your state senator when there are six of them in
one district
By Josh Goodman, Stateline Staff Writer


-- 
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"Respect for Every Vote and Every Voice"

Rob Richie
Executive Director

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