A blue ribbon commission of Illinois civic leaders co-chaired by former federal judge and White House counsel Abner Mikva and former governor Jim Edgar came out for a return to three-seat districts with cumulative voting rights for the Illinois House of Representatives in 2001.

The report, issued by the Institute for Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois is here:

http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu/publications/specPubs/ExeSumry.pdf

and the background papers are here:

http://www.igpa.uiuc.edu/publications/specPubs/BckgrdPapers.pdf

The report has a wealth of information on single-member districts versus multi-member districts (where the political minority had some representation). It's interested (and slightly academic) reading.

Also, there's an constitutional amendment filed in the House to reinstate three-seat districts (without increasing the number of representatives -- which was the key reason why the Cutback Amendment of 1980 earned the support of voters, as the number of representatives was reduced from 177 to 118 with the switch to single-member districts). The amendment is HJRCA 22 and it is here:

http://www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=22&GAID=3&DocTypeID=HJRCA&LegID=7580&SessionID=3

The Speaker of the House is opposed to cumulative voting rights in multi-member districts,, so the amendment is not expected to be assigned to a substantive committee this year.

And finally, while there was some interesting discussion on the list related to the extent to which gerrymandering is fueled largely by single-member districts disenfranchising (or pick a different verb) the political minority or if a proportional voting system is still subject to the same level of manipulation by the map, I don't think it is fair to say that there's an academic consensus that there is the same opportunity to gerrymander in a proportional voting system as in a single-member district system. If anything (the interesting work cited in Prof. Rush's email notwithstanding), I suspect the academic consensus cuts the other way: it is easier to gerrymander in a single-member district system than in a proportional voting system.

Certainly the International Handbook of Electoral System Design (www.idea.int) of the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance cites a disadvantage of first-past-the-post voting systems as the possible manipulation of electoral boundaries.

Best,
Dan
Dan Johnson-Weinberger
General Counsel
Center for Voting and Democracy
www.fairvote.org

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