DOCSLIB.ORG

Cumulative Voting in the United States Richard H

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Cumulative Voting in the United States Richard H University of Chicago Legal Forum Volume 1995 | Issue 1 Article 10 Cumulative Voting in the United States Richard H. Pildes [email protected] Kristen A. Donoghue [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf Recommended Citation Pildes, Richard H. and Donoghue, Kristen A. () "Cumulative Voting in the United States," University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1995: Iss. 1, Article 10. Available at: http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1995/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Chicago Legal Forum by an authorized administrator of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cumulative Voting in the United States Richard H. Pildest and Kristen A. Donoghuett Recent Supreme Court decisions involving North Carolina and Georgia cast substantial (if ambiguous) doubt on the contin- ued constitutionality of race-conscious districting.1 For the previ- ous fifteen years, since the passage of the significant 1982 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act ("VRA"), 2 race-conscious districting has emerged as the principal tool for ensuring black political representation in circumstances in which voting is polarized along racial lines. Now, however, the Court has de- clared that strict constitutional scrutiny must be applied whenev- er race is "the predominant factor motivating the legislature's decision to place a significant number of voters within or without a particular district."3 The precise scope of this enigmatic rule4 will remain uncertain until the Court decides future cases, but the rule undoubtedly puts the intentional creation of black- majority election districts on the defensive. If continued pursuit of minority political representation is going to remain a goal of public policy, the time to consider alternatives other than race- conscious districting has arrived. The most promising alternatives do away not just with race- conscious districting, but with territorial districting altogether. t Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School. tt J.D., University of Michigan Law School, 1995. This paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Geographers Association (1995) and the American Political Science Association (1995). We are grateful to all the people in Chilton County, Alabama who gave so freely of their time and provided us with all the information that we requested. We also thank Adam Berinsky for outstanding assistance in performing the statistical analyses reported in this Article. In addition, we thank the University of Texas Law School for administra- tive support provided during a visit there. The research reported here was generously supported by the University of Michigan Cook Fund. For helpful comments, we thank Samuel Issacharoff, David Lublin, and Robert Richie; for research assistance, Jeff Gitchel. Shaw v Reno, 113 S Ct 2816 (1993); Miller v Johnson, 115 S Ct 2475 (1995). 2 Pub L No 97-205, 96 Stat 131 (1982), codified at 42 USC § 1973 (1988). 3 Johnson, 115 S Ct at 2488. For an argument that this rule is unintelligible in theory and unimplementable in practice, see Richard Pildes, Principled Limitations on Racial Redistricting (forthcoming 1996)(on file with Richard Pildes at the University of Michigan Law School). 242 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO LEGAL FORUM [1995: Such alternative voting systems include cumulative voting, limited voting, and preference (or single-transferable) voting. These alternative voting systems may sound like the exotic mus- ings of academic theorists,5 but such alternatives to territorial districts have long been used in other democratic countries.6 Even within the United States, these alternative voting systems are quietly but increasingly coming into use, primarily at the local government level. The purpose of this Article is to provide detailed quantitative and qualitative information, from one of the longest running experiments with cumulative voting in the United States, on the experience of cumulative voting in actual practice. In Chilton County, Alabama, cumulative voting has been in use since 1988 to elect members of the County's principal political bodies, the County Commission and the Board of Education. The academic literature is now filled with abstract arguments about the com- parative merits and disadvantages of different voting systems, particularly the choice between territorial districts and alterna- tive voting systems.7 Rather than continuing this abstract de- bate, it seems more valuable to assess these theoretical positions pragmatically, by exploring the actual record of alternative voting in practice. We conducted extensive field interviews with governmental, partisan, and media figures centrally involved in local politics in Chilton County. In addition, we analyzed available election- return data since 1988 to determine the extent of racially polar- ized voting and what differences, if any, the switch to cumulative ' For works in recent years advocating alternative voting systems to remedy viola- tions of the VRA, see note 52. ' The most thorough studies of voting systems in other democratic countries, with an emphasis on the contrast between Anglo-American style majority-rule systems and European proportional-representation systems, can be found in the work of Arend Liphart. See Arend Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty- Seven Democracies 1945-1990 (Oxford University Press, 1994); Bernard Grofman and Arend Lijphart, eds, Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences (Agathon Press, 1986); Arend Lijphart, Democracies:Patterns of Majoritarianand Consensus Government in Twenty-One Countries (Yale University Press, 1984). ' See, for example, Douglas W. Rae, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws 69- 125 (Yale University Press, 2d ed 1971)(comparing proportional representation and non- proportional representation voting systems generally and identifying thirteen "differential propositions" and seven "similarity propositions" between the systems). For recent schol- arly advocacy of alternative voting systems for the United States, which responds to some of the criticisms of such systems, see Douglas J. Amy, Real Choices/New Voices: The Case for ProportionalRepresentation Elections in the United States (Columbia University Press, 1993). 241] CUMULATIVE VOTING voting has made. We briefly summarize our findings at the outset: while not all the predicted benefits of cumulative voting have occurred in Chilton County thus far, neither have the worst fears been realized. In general, our study confirms that the es- sentials of cumulative voting are working out largely as theorists have predicted ex ante. Cumulative voting turns out not to be without cultural and political costs, which we identify as precise- ly as we can. But those costs do not appear substantial. Any voting system, including the status quo of territorial districting, has costs as well as advantages; indeed, the VRA itself is a re- sponse to certain costs of territorial districting. The choice of voting systems is necessarily pragmatic: on balance, which sys- tem, best, if nonetheless imperfectly, serves the relevant goals of American democracy. The data we report here should make for more informed choices between three of the most important op- tions currently dominating political practice and public debate: territorial districts, race-based districting, and alternative voting systems such as cumulative voting. I. THREE MEANS TOWARD MINORITY POLITICAL REPRESENTATION We begin with the assumption that in the context of Ameri- can history and politics, some significant degree of representation of minorities in American political bodies, particularly blacks,' is important for any of several reasons. Many people who otherwise disagree about other aspects of contemporary civil-rights policy are likely to accept this basic starting point in thinking about contemporary American democracy. Just as with police depart- ments and juries, legislative bodies-the quintessential public institutions-might be considered more legitimate, more effective, To avoid making already complex linguistic and political problems even more intractable, this Article is written in terms of the effects of the VRA and cumulative voting on black voters rather than on minority voters in general. In Chilton County, blacks are the only relevant minority group, within the terms of the VRA, present in demographically significant numbers. Hence, this Article focuses exclusively on black vot- ers. Although blacks were the principal focus of the VRA when originally enacted in 1965, since 1975 the Act also has been used to protect Asian-Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan natives, and persons of Spanish heritage. 42 USC §§ 1973(a), 1973b (f)(2) (1988). One of the defects of current public civil-rights discourse and policy-making is the tenden- cy to generalize the distinct positions and experiences of different minority groups into a universal minority experience. Relevant differentiations are important, if often neglected, to the scope and justifications of different policies. See, for example, Samuel Issacharoff, Groups and the Right to Vote (forthcoming in Emory Law Journal (1995)). For this reason, this Article is narrowly focused on black political representation and does not address issues of minority representation in general except where the text specifically so indicates.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Legislature by Lot: Envisioning Sortition Within a Bicameral System
    PASXXX10.1177/0032329218789886Politics & SocietyGastil and Wright 789886research-article2018 Special Issue Article Politics & Society 2018, Vol. 46(3) 303 –330 Legislature by Lot: Envisioning © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: Sortition within a Bicameral sagepub.com/journals-permissions https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329218789886DOI: 10.1177/0032329218789886 System* journals.sagepub.com/home/pas John Gastil Pennsylvania State University Erik Olin Wright University of Wisconsin–Madison Abstract In this article, we review the intrinsic democratic flaws in electoral representation, lay out a set of principles that should guide the construction of a sortition chamber, and argue for the virtue of a bicameral system that combines sortition and elections. We show how sortition could prove inclusive, give citizens greater control of the political agenda, and make their participation more deliberative and influential. We consider various design challenges, such as the sampling method, legislative training, and deliberative procedures. We explain why pairing sortition with an elected chamber could enhance its virtues while dampening its potential vices. In our conclusion, we identify ideal settings for experimenting with sortition. Keywords bicameral legislatures, deliberation, democratic theory, elections, minipublics, participation, political equality, sortition Corresponding Author: John Gastil, Department of Communication Arts & Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, 232 Sparks Bldg., University Park, PA 16802, USA. Email: [email protected] *This special issue of Politics & Society titled “Legislature by Lot: Transformative Designs for Deliberative Governance” features a preface, an introductory anchor essay and postscript, and six articles that were presented as part of a workshop held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, September 2017, organized by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright.
    [Show full text]
  • Another Consideration in Minority Vote Dilution Remedies: Rent
    Another C onsideration in Minority Vote Dilution Remedies : Rent -Seeking ALAN LOCKARD St. Lawrence University In some areas of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities have been effectively excluded from the democratic process by a variety of means, including electoral laws. In some instances, the Courts have sought to remedy this problem by imposing alternative voting methods, such as cumulative voting. I examine several voting methods with regard to their sensitivity to rent-seeking. Methods which are less sensitive to rent-seeking are preferred because they involve less social waste, and are less likely to be co- opted by special interest groups. I find that proportional representation methods, rather than semi- proportional ones, such as cumulative voting, are relatively insensitive to rent-seeking efforts, and thus preferable. I also suggest that an even less sensitive method, the proportional lottery, may be appropriate for use within deliberative bodies, where proportional representation is inapplicable and minority vote dilution otherwise remains an intractable problem. 1. INTRODUCTION When President Clinton nominated Lani Guinier to serve in the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, an opportunity was created for an extremely valuable public debate on the merits of alternative voting methods as solutions to vote dilution problems in the United States. After Prof. Guinier’s positions were grossly mischaracterized in the press,1 the President withdrew her nomination without permitting such a public debate to take place.2 These issues have been discussed in academic circles,3 however, 1 Bolick (1993) charges Guinier with advocating “a complex racial spoils system.” 2 Guinier (1998) recounts her experiences in this process.
    [Show full text]
  • If You Like the Alternative Vote (Aka the Instant Runoff)
    Electoral Studies 23 (2004) 641–659 www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud If you like the alternative vote (a.k.a. the instant runoff), then you ought to know about the Coombs rule Bernard Grofman a,Ã, Scott L. Feld b a Department of Political Science and Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA b Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University,Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA Received 1 July2003 Abstract We consider four factors relevant to picking a voting rule to be used to select a single candidate from among a set of choices: (1) avoidance of Condorcet losers, (2) choice of Condorcet winners, (3) resistance to manipulabilityvia strategic voting, (4) simplicity. However, we do not tryto evaluate all voting rules that might be used to select a single alternative. Rather, our focus is restricted to a comparison between a rule which, under the name ‘instant runoff,’ has recentlybeen pushed byelectoral reformers in the US to replace plurality-based elections, and which has been advocated for use in plural societies as a means of mitigating ethnic conflict; and another similar rule, the ‘Coombs rule.’ In both rules, voters are required to rank order candidates. Using the instant runoff, the candidate with the fewest first place votes is eliminated; while under the Coombs rule, the candidate with the most last place votes is eliminated. The instant runoff is familiar to electoral sys- tem specialists under the name ‘alternative vote’ (i.e., the single transferable vote restricted to choice of a single candidate). The Coombs rule has gone virtuallyunmentioned in the electoral systems literature (see, however, Chamberlin et al., 1984).
    [Show full text]
  • League of Women Voters Positions on Ranked Voting Methods (IRV and Choice Voting)
    League of Women Voters positions on Ranked Voting Methods (IRV and Choice Voting) ARIZOA The League of Women Voters of Arizona believes in the election system principle of greater vote representation. The LWVAZ maintains the hope that election system reform that provides a stronger voice for the greatest number of voters should have a positive effect on voter participation. Therefore, the LWVAZ: • Supports changing the present election systems so that they more accurately represent the wishes of voters: • Adopting the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)system for single seat races; • Adopting proportional representation for multi-seat races, specifically Ranked Choice Voting. • Believes that education of the voting public is important to election systems. • Supports giving Arizona voters the option of more choice among election systems. Consensus 2005, Amended 2008 CALIFORIA Election Systems Position Support election systems for executive offices, both at the state and local levels, that require the winner to receive a majority of the votes, as long as the majority is achieved using a voting method such as Instant Runoff Voting, rather than a second, separate runoff election. Adopted 2001; Modified 2003; Readopted at last convention. FLORIDA Following statewide local League consensus meetings, the League of Women Voters of Florida announced a new Election Law, Voting Process position making the method of instant runoff voting a recommended alternative to plurality voting. MASSACHUSETTS VOTING SYSTEMS GOAL: Voting systems should be easy to use, administer and understand, encourage high voter turnout, encourage real discussion on issues, promote minority representation, and encourage candidates to run. When electing someone to a single executive office at the state level, such as governor or attorney general, including primary and general elections, the voting system should require the winner to obtain a majority of the votes.
    [Show full text]
  • Resolving Election Error: the Dynamic Assessment of Materiality
    William & Mary Law Review Volume 54 (2012-2013) Issue 1 Article 3 November 2012 Resolving Election Error: The Dynamic Assessment of Materiality Justin Levitt Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Election Law Commons Repository Citation Justin Levitt, Resolving Election Error: The Dynamic Assessment of Materiality, 54 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 83 (2012), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol54/iss1/3 Copyright c 2012 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr RESOLVING ELECTION ERROR: THE DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT OF MATERIALITY JUSTIN LEVITT* ABSTRACT The ghosts of the 2000 presidential election will return in 2012. Photo-finish and error-laden elections recur in each cycle. When the margin of error exceeds the margin of victory, officials and courts must decide which, if any, errors to discount or excuse, knowing that the answer will likely determine the election’s winner. Yet despite widespread agreement on the likelihood of another national melt- down, neither courts nor scholars have developed consistent princi- ples for resolving the errors that cause the chaos. This Article advances such a principle, reflecting the underlying values of the electoral process. It argues that the resolution of an election error should turn on its materiality: whether the error is material to the eligibility of a voter or the determination of her ballot preference. In developing this argument, this Article offers the first trans- substantive review of materiality as a governing principle.
    [Show full text]
  • Cumulative Voting and the Voting Rights Act
    Cumulative Voting and the Voting Rights Act Amicus Curiae in a Maryland Voting Rights Case Edward Still and Pamela Karlan Following are excerpts from an amicus curiae prepared by Edward Still and Pamela Karlan for The Center for Voting and Democracy in Cane v. Worcester County, a voting rights case concerning county commission elections in Maryland described in Deborah Jeon's article. It is important to stress that the Center's position is that cumulative voting's advantages are even more valid for choice voting (preference voting); the Center also filed an amicus brief in a Massachusetts case touching on this comparison. For full copies of either brief and footnotes (some of which are incorporated in the text), contact the Center. I. Cumulative Voting Retains Many of the Valuable Features of At Large Elections While Curing Their Exclusionary, Winner-Take-All Tendencies Cumulative voting preserves many of the distinctive and valuable features of at- large elections. For example, in a cumulative voting jurisdiction, candidates can live anywhere and voters can vote for any candidate who is running, rather than being restricted to voting for a candidate from a designated district. Thus, candidates retain the incentive to compete for support throughout the county and, after election, continue to represent the entire county rather than a geographic subdivision. The sole significant difference between cumulative voting and traditional at-large voting is that in a cumulative voting system voters can ìcumulateî their votes, that is, cast more than one vote for a candidate about whom they feel strongly. So, for example, in Worcester County, a voter who strongly supported Candidate Jones, could cast all five of her votes for Jones.
    [Show full text]
  • HANDBOOK of COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL CHOICE
    HANDBOOK of COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL CHOICE EDITED BY Felix Brandt Vincent Conitzer Ulle Endriss Jérôme Lang Ariel D. Procaccia Handbook of Computational Social Choice The rapidly growing field of computational social choice, at the intersection of computer science and economics, deals with the computational aspects of collective decision making. This handbook, written by thirty-six prominent members of the computational social choice community, covers the field comprehensively. Chapters devoted to each of the field’s major themes offer detailed introductions. Topics include voting theory (such as the computa- tional complexity of winner determination and manipulation in elections), fair allocation (such as algorithms for dividing divisible and indivisible goods), coalition formation (such as matching and hedonic games), and many more. Graduate students, researchers, and pro- fessionals in computer science, economics, mathematics, political science, and philosophy will benefit from this accessible and self-contained book. Felix Brandt is Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Mathematics at Technische Universitat¨ Munchen.¨ Vincent Conitzer is the Kimberly J. Jenkins University Professor of New Technologies and Professor of Computer Science, Professor of Economics, and Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Ulle Endriss is Associate Professor of Logic and Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. Jer´ omeˆ Lang is a senior researcher in computer science at CNRS-LAMSADE, Universite´ Paris-Dauphine. Ariel D. Procaccia is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Handbook of Computational Social Choice Edited by Felix Brandt Technische Universitat¨ Munchen¨ Vincent Conitzer Duke University Ulle Endriss University of Amsterdam Jer´ omeˆ Lang CNRS Ariel D.
    [Show full text]
  • Instant-Runoff Voting
    INFORMATION BRIEF Minnesota House of Representatives Research Department 600 State Office Building St. Paul, MN 55155 Matt Gehring, Legislative Analyst 651-296-5052 February 2007 Instant-Runoff Voting Instant-runoff voting is a system of voting that allows voters to rank their preference for an office among multiple candidates. In November 2006, Minneapolis voters approved this method of voting for candidates for city offices beginning in 2009. This information brief answers basic questions about how instant-runoff voting works. Contents What is Instant-Runoff Voting?....................................................................... 2 What does an IRV ballot look like?................................................................. 2 How are IRV votes counted? ........................................................................... 3 Contingencies: What if...?................................................................................ 4 Effects: How does IRV affect...? ..................................................................... 5 Who uses IRV? ................................................................................................ 6 Do local governments need authorization to use IRV? ................................... 6 Is IRV vulnerable to legal challenges? ............................................................ 7 Copies of this publication may be obtained by calling 651-296-6753. This document can be made available in alternative formats for people with disabilities by calling 651-296-6753 or the
    [Show full text]
  • Approval Voting
    Approval Voting 21-301 2018 3 May 1 Approval Voting All of the voting methods we have yet discussed are what is known as \preferential voting" methods. In a preferential voting system, voters are asked for their specific preferences regarding candidates: who do you prefer most, who in second place, etc. Nonpreferential voting is a variant in which voters do not rank candidates, but instead divide into categories of \acceptable" and \unacceptable." The following schema include some elements of nonpreferential voting, although some combine preferential and nonpreferential ideas. 1.1 Approval Voting: Basics In an approval voting system, each voter indicates, for each candidate, whether they approve of that choice or not. There is no ranking necessary. The candidate that then has the highest number of approvals goes on to win the election. Approval voting has gotten some recent support in political circles as a way of preventing a so-called \spoiler" candidate from taking support away from an otherwise viable first-choice candidate. If voters are permitted to approve multiple candidates, then they can vote both for the major candidate and the minor \spoiler." In addition, proponents of approval voting say that such systems reduce negative campaigning, as your goal is not to become a \lesser of two evils" but to maximize the number of voters who approve of you (this claim is hotly debated, but we've veered now into the crossover between mathematics and behavioral science). Criticisms of this approach center around the tendency of voters to engage in \bullet" voting, that is, voting only for their first choice preferred candidate rather than all those they approve; and the tendency of voters to approve of a candidate that they may not actually approve in order to prevent a different candidate from winning.
    [Show full text]
  • Bernard Grofman Jack W
    TR PR Bernard Grofman Jack W. Peltason Chair of Democracy Studies r Department of Political Science and Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine AV PL MMP This slide may be used only with written permission of author: B. Grofman [email protected] RIDDLE ME THIS Q. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ELECTORAL ENGINEERING AND ELECTORAL MANIPULATION? 3 Electoral Engineering Electoral Manipulation KEY ELECTORAL RULE CHOICES (1) CHOICE OF ELECTORAL SYSTEM (2) RULES SPECIFYING HOW THE SET OF CANDIDATES OR PARTIES THAT ARE ON THE BALLOT IS DETERMINED (3) APPORTIONMENT , i.e., the allocation of the number of seats to be given to particular geographic areas based on the population in those areas, and the assignment of responsibility for apportionment (4) DISTRICTING. including decisions about the geographic location and the district magnitudes of the various constituencies, and the assignment of responsibility for redistricting (5) ELECTION TIMING (6) BALLOT RECORDING TECHNOLOGY, including questions such as whether it is easy to cast a straight party ticket in elections where there are multiple offices on the ballot (7) RULES FOR CAMPAIGNING AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE Farquharson, Robin. 1970. Theory of Voting (New Haven, Yale) is the locus classicus of the second and fourth forms of manipulation. Four BIG questions of earlier research: 1. (party competition and representation) How do electoral systems impact on the translation of votes to seats with respect to proportionality? (Lakeman) 2. (party competition) How do electoral systems impact on the number of parties? (Duverger) 3. (party competition) How do electoral systems impact on the likelihood that extremist parties will be represented (Hermens) 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Multiwinner Approval Voting: an Apportionment Approach
    Multiwinner Approval Voting: An Apportionment Approach Steven J. Brams Department of Politics New York University New York, NY 10012 UNITED STATES [email protected] D. Marc Kilgour Department of Mathematics Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 CANADA [email protected] Richard F. Potthoff Department of Political Science and Social Science Research Institute Duke University Durham, NC 27708 UNITED STATES [email protected] 2 Abstract To ameliorate ideological and partisan cleavages in legislatures and councils today, we propose a modification of approval voting to elect multiple winners, who may be either individuals or members of a political party. We analyze two divisor methods of apportionment, first proposed by Jefferson and Webster, that iteratively depreciate the approval votes of voters who have one or more of their approved candidates already elected. In fact, we work within a continuum of apportionment methods that contains both Jefferson and Webster as special cases. We compare a sequential rule for allocating approval votes within these methods with a nonsequential rule, which is computationally complex but feasible for many elections. Whereas Webster apportionments tend to be more representative of the electorate than those of Jefferson, the latter, whose equally spaced vote thresholds for winning seats duplicate those of cumulative voting in 2-party elections, seem more even-handed or balanced. 3 1. Introduction The problem of reaching a consensus in a democracy has become more fraught as parties in many countries evince less and less appetite for compromise. This has been true in elections of a single leader, such as a president, but it has also been true in elections of legislatures and councils, whose members are often split ideologically and refuse to bargain in good faith.
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluating Voting Methods
    Evaluating Voting Methods 1. Comparison Tables People can and do debate what are the most important criteria for evaluating voting methods. Several tables are available with various analyses of how well each voting method works for each criterion. We included three in the 2017 LWVBC Voting Methods Report. *See page 18 for our table. *See page 19 for a FairVote table. *See page 20 for a Center for Range Voting table. If we were to update our table today, we would include “auditable under a risk-limiting audit (RLA)” since Colorado now conducts RLAs for coordinated elections. The LWVCO Voting Methods Position does refer to “post-election analysis” and “transparency.” Remember that these tables address single winner voting methods. They do not include criteria such as “promote proportional representation” which is relevant for multi-member bodies, although the LWVCO Voting Methods Position also mentions proportional representation. The list of various alternative voting methods is a moving target. New ones are being created from scratch or tweaked from old voting methods every year. For example, in 2018 Lane County, Oregon, voters had a ballot measure on STAR voting, a brand-new voting method. The tables referenced above address only the best-known methods. 2. Weighting Criteria The most important factors to consider when proposing adoption of a particular voting method may be: 1) What criteria are most important to the electorate? 2) What criteria enable and facilitate election administrators to conduct elections? See below for some examples of these two considerations in real life. When considering criteria for evaluating voting methods, different people or communities may assign different weights to the criteria depending on their personal philosophy so that even if two people fill in a table’s fields identically, one person might determine that Voting Method V is better and another might determine that Voting Method M is better.
    [Show full text]