Pender County has five County Commissioners elected for four-year terms. Although the candidates are attached to specific districts, and as a result have to meet residency requirements in order to stand, they are voted for by the county at large. Moreover, the elections are staggered at two-year intervals, making it harder to offer voters a broad range of candidates at a given time, or allow them to vote for a representative legislature. Unsurprisingly given this, although 22.5 % of the population is African American, all current County Commissioners are white. The same system is also used to elect the Pender County Board of Education and all city and town councils. This includes two towns, Burgaw and St. Helena, which have minority African American populations sizeable enough have a chance of winning representation under a full representation system.  

October 19th 2009
A better election system
Lowell Sun

Election expert Doug Amy explains how choice voting can "inject new blood" into the elections of Lowell (MA), and give voters a greater incentive to participate.

October 16th 2009
Haven't Detroit voters spoken enough?
Livingston Daily

In Detroit, there have been three mayors in the past two years and the current one has come under scrutiny. Perhaps a system like instant runoff voting will help bring political stability to motor city.

August 21st 2009
Black candidate for Euclid school board to test new voting system
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Limited voting, a form of proportional voting, will be used in Euclid (OH), in the hopes of allowing better representation of minorities.

July 2nd 2009
Reforming Albany
New York Times

FairVote's Rob Richie responds in a letter to the editor making the case for proportional voting systems to bring substantive reform to New York's legislature.