Full Representation Election Systems

Full representation election systems may seem different from traditional American elections, but they are common around the world, are constitutional and have a long history in the United States. They are used in a growing number of American localities, primarily because they provide a natural means to represent political minorities ��� whether those minorities are defined by race, political views or some other factor. They can be understood as systems of ���full representation��� because the views and interests of the electorate are more fully represented than in traditional elections in which barely half of the electorate has the power to control all representation.

In the United States, most elections are decided according to the "winner-take-all" principle. Winner-take-all means that the candidate with the most votes wins the election. There are different variations of winner-take-all elections. In a plurality voting system, a candidate with the most votes is the winner, even if receiving less than a majority of votes in a race with more than two candidates. Some jurisdictions require winners to gain a majority, which typically is achieved in a second-round runoff election between the two candidates who won the most votes in the first round. (Runoff elections are common in local and primary elections in the South, but rarer in the rest of the country, particularly for state and federal elections). Sometimes candidates are elected in single-member districts ��� which always are winner-take-all rules, as only one candidate by definition can win ��� while other times candidates are elected at-large or in multi-seat districts.

Whatever variations are used, winner-take-all systems are designed to reward the majority group in the constituency in which they are held (that constituency being a city for an at-large election, for example, or a single-member district when a district system is used). With winner-take-all, the majority can effectively ���shut out��� a minority grouping in a constituency, even when voters in that minority group make up 49% of the electorate. Winner-take-all elections thus can be a barrier to fair representation unless steps are taken to address their natural tendency to under-represent political minorities.

In most places in the country people tend to vote along racial lines ��� when given a range of choice, whites generally vote for white candidates, blacks vote for black candidates, Latinos for Latinos and so on. When such ���racial bloc��� voting happens, many racial minority groups cannot elect someone of their own choosing because the majority group outnumbers them. When a minority group is only 10%-20% of the population in a community where race strongly influences voting patterns, for example, it is extremely unlikely that its members will elect candidates of their choice ��� particularly candidates of their racial group. The use of winner-take-all elections explains why some jurisdictions have not had a black representative since Reconstruction. It also explains why that as of 2001, none of our current 50 governors or 100 U.S. Senators are African American or Latino; even though African Americans and Latinos together make up a quarter of all Americans, they are a minority in each of the 50 states.

Full representation systems reflect a different principle than winner-take-all. With these methods of election, a majority cannot control the outcome of every seat up for election. A grouping of voters with 51 percent of the vote will likely win a majority of the seats with a full representation system, but not all the seats. Even if the majority controls the election in the sense of winning the majority of seats, it cannot deny substantial groupings of voters a meaningful voice in campaigns, a seat at the table of government and a reason for their supporters to be politically active between elections.

Full representation systems are sometimes called ���proportional��� because they allow like-minded groupings of voters ��� as determined by how people vote ��� to elect representatives roughly in proportion to their share of the vote in an election. By opening the door to wider representation of the electorate, full representation systems make it possible for most voters to elect someone of their own choosing. Even if voters in a minority group make up only 20 percent of the voting-age population, they still can elect someone they like if a full representation system is used to elect at least five seats.

Even though they reflect a different principle of inclusion than winner-take-all elections, full representation systems are fully constitutional, as evidenced by Department of Justice and countless rulings by the judiciary. They uphold the one-person, one-vote principle because all voters come to the polls with the same power to elect candidates. Full representation comes in numerous variations that address most concerns skeptics might have. For example, they can be used in combination with single-member district systems if a community seeks to ensure that every neighborhood has at least one representative. They can be structured so that access to representation increases for political and racial minorities, but remains high enough to prevent narrowly ideological extremists from winning seats. The full representation systems used in the United States can be adopted for non-partisan elections because they are based on voting for candidates rather than political parties.

Most well-established democracies use some version of full representation for their national elections. This manual describes three specific alternatives that are currently used in localities in the United States: cumulative voting, limited voting and choice voting. They are sometimes called "modified at-large" systems because at least some candidates must be elected at-large or in multi-seat districts (meaning districts with more than one representative.) But unlike traditional at-large elections, a grouping of voters well below half of the voting population can win a seat and hold the representative accountable in the next election. The greater the number of representatives to be elected, the lower the share of votes necessary to elect a representative.

To understand how these systems provide increased access to representation, it is first essential to understand the concept of the ���threshold of inclusion��� ��� that is, the percentage of voters who can elect a candidate no matter what other voters do.

Threshold of Inclusion: With full representation systems, it is relatively easy to estimate the share of the electorate a like-minded grouping of voters must have in order to control election of their preferred candidate. This share of the vote is called the threshold of inclusion. Any grouping that makes up this share of voters cannot be excluded from representation as long as its members turn out to vote at the same rate as the majority population and vote cohesively (meaning for the same candidates). That means that in an at-large city council race, black voters are sure to elect at least one council seat as long as: 1) their percentage of the adult population is equal or above the threshold of inclusion; 2) they turn out to vote in equal percentages as the white community; and 3) they vote for the same candidate.

If three seats were being elected for a school board using a full representation system, for example, black voters would have to be responsible for ensuring that their preferred candidate received at least one vote more than 25% of the total votes cast. Any three candidates who received more than 25% of the votes would win because together they would have more than 75% of all votes ��� leaving less than 25% of votes for any remaining candidate.

The threshold of inclusion varies depending on the number of seats contested (see charts on following pages describing limited and cumulative voting ): the more representatives to be elected, the lower the threshold. Note that the threshold of inclusion is a worst-case scenario for the minority group based on the majority community allocating all of its votes precisely among just the right number of candidates in an effort to win all seats. In reality, a minority grouping of voters often can elect a candidate even when its share of the vote falls below the threshold.

Charts detailing the threshold of inclusion for each system are included on the following pages.

This threshold is for a minority-backed candidate to be sure of winning one seat. When using cumulative voting, the one vote system and choice voting, the opportunity to win more than one seat is in direct relation to multiples of the threshold ��� if the minority-backed community had twice the share of the vote as the threshold of inclusion, for example, it would have the power to elect at least two seats.

Cumulative Voting

Table of Contents