Good news yesterday from Amarillo for advocates of proportional voting. In 2006, a voting rights suit against the winner-take-all, at-large voting system for the Amarillo College board of regents had been settled with cumulative voting. Cumulative voting is non-winner-take-all voting method where candidates run in multi-seat districts and voters have as many votes as seats and can allocate their votes however they wish rather than cast only one vote person candidate. It has been used since 2000 for the Amarillo Independent School District, each time resulting in at least one person of color winning after two decades of no racial minority winning with the old winner-take-all system - currently the seven-member board has one African American and one Latina.

On May 10, three at-large seats were elected to the college board, using cumulative voting for the first time. One person of color ran — African American incumbent Prenis Williams, who had been appointed in 2006. He comfortably finished first. (Also, Latina incumbent Lilia Escajeda was unopposed in a separate election for board chair).

Amarillo’s population is about 185,000. Demographics are changing, but about 70-75% of the adult population is white, with Latinos making up the majority of the rest of the population .

For more, see:

* Two new faces join AC regents, a news article in the Amarillo Globe-News on Sunday, May 11, 2008

* History of cumulative voting in Texas at FairVote.org

* Cumulative voting at work in Texas, an article by Bob Brischetto from 1995

Other posts by Rob Richie

• Founding FairVote backer and Cincinnati legend Harris Weston dies - July 4th, 2009
• Sarah Palin's resignation to reduce women governors to six - July 3rd, 2009
• Delaware house votes 2 to 1 for National Popular Vote - 29th chamber in 18th state - June 24th, 2009
• Obama's political team: Expediency over principle in "working" Electoral College rather than reforming it - June 21st, 2009
• Special interests upset with instant runoff voting in San Francisco - and broader lessons - June 21st, 2009
• FairVote chair Krist Novoselic makes key point about rights of association in candidacy - June 17th, 2009
• Brennan Center's new report on universal registration joins FairVote in highlighting Canadian model - June 16th, 2009
• Instant runoff voting in Australia: Guest blogger Ben Raue - June 16th, 2009
• Washington, D.C. City council has chance to make D.C. a "beacon of democracy" - June 13th, 2009
• Slamdunk win in Minnesota Supreme Court highlights big week for instant runoff voting - June 12th, 2009