Fewer Votes Than Seats in a Multi-Seat Election
A limited voting system is one that limits
voters to casting ballots for a smaller number of candidates than the number of seats on a
governing body. Single-member district systems in fact involve limited voting, but their
effect is different than a limited system that restricts voters to casting fewer votes
than the number of seats in their constituency: for example, six votes in a nine member
governing body elected at-large.
The multi-member limited voting system is
advocated by some reformers and voting rights attorneys who wish to provide direct
representation for a minority political party or group. This type of limited voting may be
used to elect an entire governing body or in multi-member districts which elect two or
more members.
Limited Voting in New York in the 1960s
New York City employed a single-member
district system in the early 1960s, and all members of the City Council were Democrats.
The City in 1963 adopted an element of multi-member limited voting by restricting
political parties to only one nomination for the two at-large council positions in the
city's five boroughs and by allowing voters only one vote for these positions.
The system was adopted to ensure that a
Republican candidate would be elected in each of the five boroughs. In 1969, however,
Liberal Party candidates, running on the same ticket as Mayor John V. Lindsay, were
elected council members at-large at the expense of Republican candidates in three
boroughs. The system subsequently was invalidated on the grounds that the system violated
the U.S. Supreme Court's one-person, one-vote dictum because of the varying populations of
the boroughs.
Multi-member limited voting will not
violate the Court's dictum when used at-large or in equally populated districts. It has
been adopted by several Alabama local governments to settle suits brought against the
local governments under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, as amended. Nevertheless,
the system may be subject to attack in court in several states on state constitutional
grounds.
Flaws with Multi-Member Limited Voting
Multi-member limited voting in theory
makes it impossible for the largest group or political party to win a disproportionate
share of the seats on a governing body and enables the largest minority group or political
party to elect one of more candidates.
But although multi-member limited voting
is preferable to the single-member district form of limited voting, it is a crude method
for securing representation of minority groups and political parties. The system neither
guarantees that each group or political party will be represented fully in proportion to
its respective voting strength nor prevents a minority from electing a majority of the
members of the governing body if several strong slates of candidates divide the votes
cast. In addition, the system typically produces no representation for independent
associations or minority political parties other than the largest one.
Two hypothetical examples will help
illustrate the representativeness of a nine-member city council elected by a system
restricting each elector to six votes. If the electorate cast 80,000 votes for slate A,
65,000 for slate B and 55,000 for slate C, slates A will win six seats, slate B three
seats and Slate C no seats; a forty percent minority thus elects two-thirds of the council
members. If, in another example, a Democratic slate receives 101,000 votes and a
Republican slate 99,000 votes, the Democrats with a bare majority will elect two-thirds of
the seats.
Furthermore, the majority party in a
partisan multi-member limited voting system may have some of its members cast votes for a
favored minority party candidate. This action encourages minority party candidates to seek
the support of the majority party. A party supported by a large majority of the voters
also can divide its supporters into two groups and win both the majority and minority
seats on the governing body. Finally, there is nothing to prevent the majority party from
assisting the formation of slates of candidates for the purpose of encouraging minority
party voters to divide their votes.
In a more subtle problem, because voters
are not allowed to express preferences among candidates they support, many voters realize
that they may contribute to the defeat of their favorite candidates by voting for lesser
choices. Consequently, as with winner-take-all, at-large systems, limited voting
encourages bullet or single-shot voting in which voters voluntarily give up voting power
by voting for only one candidate.
The potential disadvantages associated
with this electoral system suggest that reformers should examine an alternative system --
the preference voting proportional representation system -- that does not suffer from
these disadvantages.
Joseph Zimmerman is Professor of
Political Science in the Graduate School of Public Affairs of the State University of New
York at Albany and a former chair of the Section on Representation and Electoral Systems
of the American Political Science Association. He co-edited United States Electoral
Systems: Their Impact on Women and Minorities (Praeger, 1992).