Jack Santucci from Democratic Piece and Rob Richie have an op-ed in the Washington Time about the breakdown of Congressional attempts to keep the DC Council multiparty. Congress had mandated a rather dumb rule that two of the at-large seats had to be from the non-majority party. Not surprisingly, this eventually led to people who are really Democrats winning those seats by out organizing competition. Now, I’m a partisan Democrat, but I do believe that there are definite virtues to avoiding one party rule. The op-ed gives some helpful suggestions how to change the electoral rules to achieve this in a way that both works and is a lot less arbitrary:
If the District's electoral rules translated political diversity into fair shares of the 13-member council, Democrats would hold a healthy majority, but Republicans typically would win one or two seats. The Statehood Greens or Libertarians might also win, and diversity in the Democratic Party would find fuller expression. A system that reduced the impact of spoilers and awarded seats in proportion to votes would let voters support their favorites, not force them to pick among front-runners.
That system, called proportional representation, guarantees the outcome that the District's limited nomination rule failed to deliver on Nov. 4. The proportional representation system comes in many forms. One style gaining popularity for local elections is called choice voting. Two dozen cities used choice voting during the Progressive Era, and Cambridge, Mass., still uses it today. New Yorkers elected their school board with choice voting until 2002. Minneapolis passed choice voting for some offices in 2006, and Cincinnati almost restored it Tuesday for city council elections.
Choice voting lets groups win numbers of seats equal to their strength in the electorate. At the same time, it lets voters choose candidates, not parties, so elected officials are accountable to people, not party bosses. Finally, if someone's favorite candidate doesn't win enough votes for a seat, the voter can pick someone to get his or her vote instead - no spoilers.
The short version is that the system works by ranking contenders. For more details, read the rest of the op-ed.
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