FairVote Feed: Proportional Voting

South Carolina Primary: One Candidate May Easily Win All Delegates

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:28:37 -0800

The political world is focused on South Carolina’s primary tomorrow, which has been a volatile race that seems to be coming down to Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Polls this week show both men hovering around a third of the vote.

But the statewide outcome is not the only story tomorrow. At this point, more attention should be paid to what nomination contests mean for allocation of delegates to the Republican National Convention this August in Florida. The bottom line is that whoever wins South Carolina will not only gain momentum, but also will likely take the lead in delegates earned from nomination contests.

The Iowa caucuses triggered great media hype over the Iowa caucuses and attention to whether Romney or Rick Santorum “won” them with a quarter of the vote, but in fact no delegates were bound by what amounted to a straw poll. The New Hampshire primary allocated only 12 delegates, with the top three vote-getters dividing them on a roughly proportional basis. With the nomination winner ultimately needing 1,144 delegates, we obviously should have a long way to go – that is, if the media will let the contest keep unfolding without prematurely crowning the current leader as the sure winner.

Delegate allocation isn’t nearly as straightforward as it might seem. FairVote has posted an updated review of delegate allocation rules in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories. In 2010, the Republican National Committee, to much fanfare, established a new rule (Republican Party’s Rule 15(b)(2)) requiring any state or territory holding a contest before April 1 must allocate delegates by proportional representation. But that’s not quite how it worked out.

First, South Carolina was one of four states exempted from the requirement to use proportional representation, but it’s the only one taking advantage of that exemption. It has established a rule that may well lead to one candidate winning all of the state’s delegates with less than 40% of the state’s popular vote.

Second, two additional states, Florida and Arizona, are allocating all delegates to the statewide winner in upcoming contests held before April 1st. They’ve lost half of their delegates already due to breaking RNC rules on when to hold the contest (as have South Carolina and New Hampshire), but are not being sanctioned for using the winner-take-all rule instead of proportional representation.

Finally, Puerto Rico is breaking the rule as well, holding a winner-take-all contest in March without any apparent penalty whatsoever.

South Carolina’s delegates may end up being allocated to more than one candidate, but it won’t be according to proportional representation. According to South Carolina’s Republican Party rules, the state party will award its 11 at-large delegates to the winner of the statewide primary vote and will award two delegates on a winner-take-all basis to the winner of each of the seven congressional districts.

In winning statewide, a candidate likely will, although not necessarily, carry most of the state’s congressional districts. That means that the winner will likely earn at least 19 of the state’s 25 delegates (11 state-wide, plus eight for carrying four districts). The winning candidate could end up with a plurality of the vote in each congressional district and earn all 25 delegates, even with far less than 50% of the vote.

South Carolina effectively would become a winner-take-all state if one candidate were to sweep the statewide primary and the congressional districts, as well. Romney still has a real chance to win the state, which would strengthen his frontrunner status, but most polls show Gingrich with a growing lead. He has the best changes to secure all of South Carolina’s 25 delegates, which would put him into the national lead.

A Gingrich win also could propel him toward a win in Florida, where his large December lead had recently evaporated as Romney surged ahead. With Florida using winner-take-all as well, whoever wins the state may well keep the lead in delegates no matter what happens in all the February contests, as those contests will be allocated largely by proportional representation.

This raises questions about why the Republican National Committee seems more concerned about trying to enforce the scheduling of primaries than its 2010 requirement of proportional representation in early contests. The party adopted strict limits on use of winner-take-all rules to ensure more states had a chance to hold meaningful contests and to force their eventual nominee to demonstrate strength in more parts of the country. With uneven enforcement of its rule, that goal is less likely to be met – and outcomes more likely to be distorted.

FairVote Tracks GOP Primaries: Understanding Proportional Representation in NH

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:43:01 -0800

Mitt Romney won 39% of the vote in New Hampshire in the nation's first 2012 primary and received seven of the state's twelve delegates, or a 58% share. An in-depth look into New Hampshire's voting method allows us to see how a disproportionate delegate distribution arises from the proportional system utilized by the New Hampshire Republican Party.

The Rules of the Republican Party Rule 15(b)(2) dictates that contests prior to April 1 must be conducted according to proportional allocation but does not specify by what means. This allows states to differ wildly in their interpretation of "proportional." As written about in FairVote's blog on January 10, New Hampshire's Republican Party chose to allocate its delegates proportionally based on a 10% threshold.

In New Hampshire, presidential primaries must be conducted according to Elections Procedure Section 659:93, requiring a minimum of a 10% threshold. Of the remaining candidates who meet this threshold, the secretary of state proportionally allocates delegates according to a version of the "highest remainder" method, one of several proportional representation formulae.

Under this method, delegates are divided according to the remaining candidates' redistributed vote percentages, with each proportion rounded down to the nearest whole number. Often there are extra delegates remaining due to this rounding procedure. While the classic version of this method allows for unassigned delegates to go to the candidates with the highest remainders, New Hampshire's version awards all remaining delegates to the candidate with the highest number of votes.

Using the classic highest remainder method for this election, Romney would come out of the first distribution with the highest remainder of 0.96, so the first remaining delegate would be awarded to him. Since a second delegate remains, it would be distributed to the candidate with the next highest remainder. Jon Huntsman, whose remainder of 0.56 just tops Ron Paul's remainder of 0.47, would be the recipient of this second delegate. In contrast, New Hampshire's variation - in "winner-take-all" fashion - awards both remaining delegates to Romney.

Here's how New Hampshire's delegate allocation compares with the classic version of highest remainder:

Candidate	Actual Percent Vote	Percent of Vote of Qualifying Candidates over 10%	Delegates Totals Under Strict Proportionality	NH Highest Remainder Method Using 10% Threshold	Classic Highest Remainder Using 10% Threshold
Romney	39.25%	49.68%	5.96	7	6
Paul	22.88%	28.96%	3.47	3	3
Huntsman	16.88%	21.37%	2.56	2	3
Gingrich	9.42%	-	0	0	0
Santorum	9.40%	-	0	0	0
Totals	97.83%	100%	12	12	12

Another unique feature of New Hampshire's allocation is its employment of a 10% threshold - a threshold that both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum barely missed achieving, even though their voters consisted of nearly 20% of the total vote. Most nations that use proportional allocation systems for their legislatures use lower thresholds (commonly a 5% threshold). With many competitive candidates in the New Hampshire primary, it should be noted that a slight change in this threshold significantly impacts the distribution of delegates. A 5% threshold, for instance, brings Gingrich and Santorum into the distribution of delegates.

Here's how the primary would have played out using a 5% threshold, compared with New Hampshire's 10% threshold - using the New Hampshire method of awarding all remaining delegates to the candidate with the highest remainder.

Candidate	Actual Percent Vote	Percent of Vote of Qualifying Candidates over 10%	NH Method Allocated Delegates Using 10% Threshold	Percent of Vote of Qualifying Candidates over 5%	NH Method Allocated Delegates Using 5% Threshold
Romney	39.25%	49.68%	7	40.12%	6
Paul	22.88%	28.96%	3	23.38%	2
Huntsman	16.88%	21.37%	2	17.25%	2
Gingrich	9.42%	-	0	9.63%	1
Santorum	9.40%	-	0	9.61%	1
Totals	97.83%	100%	12	100%	12

Other notable news from New Hampshire:

President Obama on the Ballot: Barack Obama also was on the ballot in New Hampshire yesterday in the Democratic primary. He earned 48,970 votes, for a total of 82%, and all 35 of New Hampshire's delegates awarded by the Democratic primary. That vote total was comparable to GOP candidate Jon Huntsman, who placed third. Note that all Democratic primaries and caucuses allocate delegates on the basis of proportional representation, but no other candidate surpassed the Democrats' typical 15% threshold.

Ron Paul Wins Landslide among Young Voters: Exit polls showed that Mitt Romney did well in a broad range of categories, e.g., income, education, religious and philosophical viewpoints. Among voters under 30, however, Ron Paul won 47% of that demographic, compared to Romney's 25%. Congressman Paul also won nearly half the youth vote in the Iowa caucuses.

Romney 2008 vs. Romney 2012: Comparing Mitt Romney's performance in New Hampshire from election to election, in 2008, Romney earned 75,675votes and 32%in the New Hampshire primary, compared to 97,532 votes and 39.3% this year. In the Iowa caucuses, his share of the vote was slightly lower in 2012 than it was in 2008.

No More Gerrymanders: Congressional Representation in the Seven At-Large States

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 13:26:05 -0800

All across the nation, lawmakers are engaged in a grand political game - decennial congressional redistricting - designed to benefit party elites rather than the people. Already, a number of states have passed controversial, opportunistic maps in which elected officials have chosen their voters before voters have chosen them. Redistricting, when combined with a winner-take-all rule in which 50% + 1 of the district vote guarantees 100% of representation, not only leaves substantial voting blocs unrepresented, but it reduces the vast majority of U.S. House elections to ceremonial, uncompetitive contests, in which voters are asked not to elect but to ratify the decisions party elites have already taken.

To address these problems, FairVote, as part of an ongoing series, has proposed state-specific "super-district" plans designed for elections with a proportional representation system, which we call "fair voting." Rather than use a winner-take-all rule, which accentuates the unfair effects of redistricting and encourages partisan games, FairVote has combined winner-take-all, gerrymandered districts to form multi-member super-districts. When using a fair voting system in these larger districts, every voter in every election will have a meaningful choice in a competitive contest and will be more likely to earn fair representation - a representative balance likely to include a winner from both major parties and occasionally a third party or independent candidate.

Winner-Take-All Plagues Seven At-Large States: However, in a handful of states, the partisan jockeying that is congressional redistricting does not occur. In each of these seven states - Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Delaware, and Vermont - just one member of Congress runs at-large across the entire state, meaning that controversies over redistricting occur only on the state legislative level. Rather than redrawing districts every ten years as the 43 other states must in order to maintain equal populations in each district, an at-large district's borders are fixed.

Though spared the controversies of congressional redistricting, winner-take-all rules still plague at-large states. By design, winner-take-all elections reduce millions of voters to irrelevancy, either because they live in a district that widely favors one party or because they vote for a candidate in a competitive constituency who falls short. Nowhere are the shortcomings of our voting system more acute than in at-large, winner-take-all races, where one individual is - rather astonishingly - responsible for representing the political and demographic diversity of an entire state. That this occurs in the U.S. House, the chamber of the national legislature that is by definition intended to reflect the complexities and vicissitudes of public opinion, is even more alarming. Americans forms of proportional representation, by contrast, would alleviate these problems.

When taken as a whole, FairVote's state-specific fair voting plans will achieve a U.S. House much more reflective of the nation's partisan and racial composition than what is possible under gerrymandered, winner-take-all contests - and, even more importantly, make every voter's participation meaningful in every election. Since these at-large states are locked in at one seat apiece, however, our construction of multi-seat super-districts is impossible under the U.S. House's current structure. For fair voting plans to be feasible in at-large states, one of two changes would need to occur: either a statutory change to federal law in order to expand the U.S. House beyond 435 seats (as was done regularly until 1910), which would give each of the at-large states at least two representatives, or a constitutional amendment allowing states to join with others to form interstate congressional districts.

Recent Winner-Take-All Elections in At-Large States: That said, it is informative to look at these states' recent congressional election results, in order to understand the degree to which winner-take-all has polluted the political waters. Racially, the at-large states are predominantly white (81.0%), with blacks (4.6%), Latinos (4.5%), and Native Americans (5.4%) all comprising roughly the same share of the combined population. Delaware is the only state with a significant black population (20.8%), while Alaska (14.4%) and South Dakota (8.5%) both contain an appreciable number of Native Americans.

With just one seat in each at-large state, racial minorities have had no chance to elect a preferred candidate who can't also draw significant support from white voters; unsurprisingly, none of the seven states have ever sent a racial minority candidate to Congress. The problem, of course, is not simply that these states lack multiple congressional districts in each of these states; rather, winner-take-all systems naturally struggle to reflect accurately the demographic composition of districts. Conversely, proportional systems lower the threshold of support necessary for like-minded voters in a minority group to help elect candidates of choice.

In terms of partisanship, all of the at-large states have partisanship index ratings that give a clear tilt toward one major party over the other. In other words, seven of seven seats are uphill battles for the other political party in House races – to the point that at least in presidential races, the contests essentially are over before they start.

Vermont and Delaware, with respective Democratic Party partisanship indexes of 64.9% and 58.9%, have backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1992. Of the other five states - Wyoming (30.3% Democratic partisanship), Alaska (35.6%), North Dakota (42.1%), South Dakota (42.2%), and Montana (45.2%) - all except Montana have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1968, and even then, the Big Sky Country gave only 37.6% to Bill Clinton in 1992, with independent Ross Perot earning 26.1% of the vote. Although the minority party has had some successes in these states' House races, all of them today are in line with their partisan leanings.

Partisanship Breakdown in the At-Large States

At-Large State	Population	Partisanship (D)	Safe Seats (D)	Leaning Seats (D)	Toss-Up	Leaning Seats (R)	Safe Seats (R)
AK	710,231	35.60%	0	0	0	0	1
MT	989,415	45.23%	0	0	0	1	0
WY	563,626	30.25%	0	0	0	0	1
SD	814,180	42.16%	0	0	0	1	0
ND	672,591	42.05%	0	0	0	1	0
DE	897,934	58.86%	1	0	0	0	0
VT	625,741	64.87%	1	0	0	0	0
Totals	5,273,718	-	2	0	0	3	2

*Partisanship percentages are based on an interpretation of vote totals in the 2008 presidential election. The seats are defined according to the following ranges: toss-up districts have a partisanship rating between 46% and 54%, leaning seats have a partisanship between 54% and 58%, and safe seats have a partisanship greater than 58%. Our projections do not take into account incumbent advantages but reflect the underlying partisanship leanings of each district.

At the congressional level, some at-large states have shown more competitiveness than their partisanship rating would suggest - likely a holdover of the more fluid political realities of the last century. For instance, Republican Mike Castle represented Delaware for nine terms until leaving the House in 2010 to run - unsuccessfully - for Vice President Joseph Biden's former U.S. Senate seat. Similarly, North Dakota and South Dakota sent Democrats to Congress before both were defeated in 2010 by Republican challengers; in the former, nine-term Democratic incumbent Earl Pomeroy fell to Rick Berg, while in the latter, four-term Democrat Stephanie Herseth Sandlin lost to Kristi Arnold Noem.

While these results show that both Democratic and Republican voters in these states have experienced electoral success, winner-take-all rules in one-seat states still mean that, in any given congressional district, only one major party's voters receive representation - and we likely will see fewer such surprises in the years ahead unless the partisan differences between the parties again become less clear. Such unfair results are to be expected in a voting system that makes nuanced representation virtually impossible.

Most at-large states have been dominated by one political party. Wyoming, for example, has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. House since Teno Roncalio resigned in 1978, while Alaska's last Democratic U.S. House representative, Nick Begich (father of current U.S. Senator Mark Begich), died while in office in 1972. In other words, it has been over 30 years since Democrats in either of these states have sent a candidate who shares their views to the U.S. House. Meanwhile, Vermont Republicans have not elected a U.S. House Member since 1990.

The U.S. House elections of 2008 and 2010 are illustrative of the lack of representation inherent in winner-take-all. In 2008, a combined 787,916 voters (counting Democrats in AK, MT, WY, and DE and Republicans in SD and ND) were left unrepresented - a number that would have been even larger had Vermont's Peter Welch received a Republican challenger. The same story occurred two years later in 2010, when - despite partisan turnover in three of the seven seats - a combined 700,304 voters (counting Democrats in AK, MT, WY, SD, and ND and Republicans in DE and VT) were unable to send a favored candidate to the U.S. House. In spite of our basic American principles grounded in representative democracy, winner-take-all ensures that the voices of many thousands of voters are left unheard and unrecognized in the halls of Congress.

Neglected Major Party Voters in the 2008 and 2010 U.S. House Elections

At-Large State	2008 Winning Party	Number of Losing Party 2008 Voters	Losing Party % 2008 Vote	2010 Winning Party	Number of Losing Party 2010 Voters	Losing Party % 2010 Vote
AK	R	141,754	45.1%	R	77,606	30.7%
MT	R	154,713	32.4%	R	121,954	33.8%
WY	R	103,677	42.8%	R	45,768	24.5%
SD	D	122,943	32.4%	R	146,589	45.9%
ND	D	118,430	37.9%	R	106,542	45.1%
DE	R	146,399	38.0%	D	125,442	41.0%
VT	D	Unopposed	N/A	D	76,403	32.1%
Totals	-	787,916	-	-	700,304	-

*Source for 2008 data and 2010 data is the New York Times.

Conclusion

Although at-large states avoid the partisan jockeying that goes along with congressional redistricting, they still struggle under the weight of oppressive winner-take-all rules. If the winner-take-all games continue, voters are likely to become even more disenchanted with our political system. In all of the at-large states, scores of voters are left unrepresented, sometimes for decades. They are forced to participate in congressional elections that lack competition and give them a representative in the "people's house" with views they strongly oppose. It is clear that one candidate cannot possibly reflect the makeup of everyone in a district, as winner-take-all assumes. Therefore, we need a new approach that will more accurately reflect the residents of each state. This will be harder to achieve for states with one House member, but by adopting fair voting plans with multi-seat super-districts, we can begin the march toward a more representative democracy.

No More Gerrymanders: Missouri's Partisan Plan versus the Fair Voting Alternative

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:31:25 -0800

Snapshot

Lawmakers in Missouri have recently passed a congressional redistricting plan as required by the U.S. Constitution.
The root of the worst problems associated with redistricting lies with winner-take-all elections, in which 50% + 1 of the vote guarantees 100% of the representation.
As part of an ongoing series, FairVote has produced a "super-district" plan designed for elections with a fair voting system. Fair voting systems are a constitutionally permissible form of proportional representation and, by allowing all voters to participate in a meaningful election, are a far better way to achieve public interest objectives than winner-take-all elections.
FairVote's fair voting plan for Missouri would result in more balanced representation and competitive elections.

The Political Context in Missouri

Missouri and the 2010 Census: From 2000 to 2010, Missouri's population grew slightly, from 5.60 million to 5.99 million, for an increase of 7.0%, as compared to a rate of 9.3% from 1990 to 2000. This rate was slightly below the national average of 9.7%. As a result, Missouri lost one U.S. House seat in congressional reapportionment, going from nine seats to eight, the first time the state has lost seats since the 1980 Census. Missouri was just 16,000 people shy of holding on to its nine seats.

Internally, population shifts appear to be a blow to congressional Democrats, with St. Louis city having seen its population decline sharply by 8.3%. Such a dip continues the Democratic stronghold's decades-long slide, as the ‘Gateway to the West' has now lost just shy of 500,000 residents since 1960, with its population of 320,000 being roughly equivalent to the city's size in 1870. As a result, St. Louis, which currently sends three members to Congress, will likely lose a seat and clout in Congress.

Missouri's other major cities appear to be going in the opposite direction, with Kansas City and Columbia growing between four and five percent and Republican-leaning Springfield soaring by over 25%. As a result, Columbia residents believe the area is entitled to a "central Missouri district," as opposed to being lopped into the northeastern 9th District that encompasses both rural towns on the Iowa boarder and affluent St. Louis suburbs. Racially, Missouri remains predominantly white (81.0%), with appreciable percentage increases for the black (11.5%) and Latino communities (3.5%), the latter of which grew by nearly 80%.

Redistricting in 2001 was relatively sedate, as split control (Democrats controlled the State House and the governorship, while Republicans had a slim majority in the State Senate) required the two parties to work together. Collaboration yielded a congressional map that locked in the 5-4 Republican advantage until 2010. In the five congressional elections since 2001, only one incumbent out of 41 (2.4%) lost, while 38 of the 40 (95%) victorious incumbents prevailed in blowouts (20%+ margin of victory) or uncontested races.

Electorally, a Closely Divided State: Democrats have had recent statewide success in Missouri, with former State Auditor Claire McCaskill - who narrowly lost her bid for the governor's office in 2004 - winning a contentious 2006 U.S. Senate race over incumbent Jim Talent, 49.6-47.3%. In the presidential race, Barack Obama lost by only 3,600 votes, but given the magnitude of his victory across the nation, Democrats in fact lost ground in the state. Indeed, this election marked the first time since 1956 in which the "bellwether" Missouri did not award its electoral votes to the national winner (in 1956, Missouri went for Democrat Adlai Stevenson).

After Democrats' statewide gains in 2006 and 2008, however, Republicans rebounded with a very strong 2010. Most dispiriting for Democrats was Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's (daughter of the late former Governor Mel Carnahan and former U.S. Senator Jean Carnahan) 13-point defeat to U.S. Representative Roy Blunt, the No. 2 ranking Republican in the 111th Congress, for Kit Bond's vacated U.S. Senate seat.

At the U.S. House level, the GOP made significant inroads, as Tea Party favorite Vicky Hartzler knocked off Democrat Ike Skelton in the 4th District by casting the 17-term incumbent as a "loyal lapdog Democrat" and a "foot soldier for Nancy Pelosi." Hartzler's victory increased the GOP control of the state's U.S. House delegation from 5-4 to 6-3. Elsewhere, Democrats Emanuel Cleaver II of the 5th District and Russ Carnahan (son of the late governor) of the 3rd District barely fended off formidable GOP challengers - Cleaver, having shed 11% since his comfortable victory in 2008, won with 53% of the vote, while Carnahan's support actually dipped below 50%, for a 17-point decrease. Perhaps most importantly for redistricting, Republicans expanded their majorities in the General Assembly, grabbing a veto-proof majority in the State Senate and coming within three votes of a two-thirds majority in the State House.

Quarreling Republicans Struggle to Reach Agreement: With control of the redistricting process split between the two parties, state Republicans faced a difficult balancing act: any lines drafted to protect GOP incumbents in Congress would be likely to draw the veto from Governor Nixon, the veto of whom State House Republicans would be unable to override absent the support of at least three Democratic representatives. Early speculation hinted that Republicans would seek to exploit tensions between the Democratic establishment and urban African Americans; by giving the 1st District's William Lacy Clay, Jr. "what he wants," the GOP hoped to persuade St. Louis black state legislators to jump ship (Clay represents Missouri's only majority-minority district).

As the General Assembly began to turn to redistricting in late March, it quickly became clear that House and Senate Republicans were of different minds and that intra-party rather than inter-party squabbles might lead to dreaded political impasse. Under the leadership of State Representative John Diehl, House Republicans made the first move, passing their proposed map on April 6 after having controversially suspended procedural rules that would have delayed the vote. Importantly, the 106-53 vote was three votes short of a veto-proof majority (three Republicans voted against the bill, while four African American Democrats supported the measure). Spurning the House proposal, Senate Republicans on April 13 passed their own plan, 22-11.

Both the Senate and the House plans eliminated Russ Carnahan's seat, forcing the four-term Democrat into either a primary against colleague William Lacy Clay, Jr. of the 1st District or a general election campaign against Republican incumbent Todd Akin in a GOP-leaning 2nd District. Alternatively, some pundits speculate that Carnahan is considering a statewide bid for lieutenant governor. The two maps differed, however, in how to divide the Democratic-leaning St. Louis collar counties of St. Charles and Jefferson in order to optimize Republican chances - the House version provided Akin with a more Republican district, and Akin agreed to support Diehl's map.

With Split Control Comes a Redistricting Nightmare: The deadlock continued with Senate and House Republicans steadfast in their loyalty to their respective proposals. Party leaders, recognizing that further delay would have caused them to miss the party's strategic April 22 deadline, agreed to conference on April 20. Republicans, anticipating Governor Nixon's opposition, wanted to ensure that they would have enough time to override the veto before the conclusion of the regular legislative session on May 13; failure to meet this timeline would have forced the General Assembly to call a special session or to wait until the fall regular session. Conference committee, coupled with the pressures of time constraints, paid dividends for the GOP, which ironed out a compromise between the two competing maps. The House passed the modified map on April 21, 96-55, with the Senate concurring in a subsequent 27-7 vote.

Governor Nixon, who reportedly objected to the map's partition of Jefferson County and its commensurate weakening of the area's influence in Washington, D.C., mollified congressional Democrats when he refused on April 30 to sign the bill into law. Undeterred, House Republicans pieced together a "rare legislative rebuke," overriding the Nixon veto 28-6 in the Senate and 109-44 in the House, making the redistricting map official. The veto override, the first since 2003, required four House Democrats to join with 105 Republicans (one GOP legislator had to leave the hospital bed to which doctors had consigned him) to break with the party line.

That all four "defectors" were African American legislators with ties to the state's two African American congressmen - Clay of St. Louis and Cleaver of Kansas City, both of whom received safer districts under the Republican map - was not lost on the media. Adding fuel to the fire, one of the four Democratic legislators, Jamilah Nasheed, defended her vote to protect Clay saying, "I'm black before I'm a Democrat." Yet another, Leonard Hughes, who had cast the deciding vote to override and who had opposed the House's April 6 map as a "gerrymander," told the Kansas City Star that Cleaver had pressured him to cross the aisle, further highlighting that high-stakes redistricting can lead to odd bedfellows. Michael Brown, a Cleaver ally also of Kansas City, cited similar reasons as Hughes, adding that he hoped the vote would encourage Republicans to work with members of the Black Caucus in the future.

Partisan Implications of the Missouri Map: If anything, the partisan implications of the map are rather predictable, the process having been more enthralling than the product. All six of the state's current GOP members of Congress find themselves in highly safe districts (although Akin has since announced a bid for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by McCaskill). Jefferson and St. Charles counties remain divided between districts, while fast-growing Columbia now finds itself not in a hoped-for "central district" but the rural southwestern 4th District.

Although the map shores up Clay and Cleaver by packing urban Democrats into two districts - all of St. Louis, for instance, is now in the 1st District - state Democrats are irate, as Carnahan's district has been axed and his home placed inside Clay's urban district. "If anybody believes that this state is a 6-2 state [when] Barack Obama narrowly lost the presidential vote," State House Minority Leader Mike Talboy intoned, "then we really need an education bill because nobody can count." Democrats' only chance for three seats is if Carnahan pulls off an upset in an Akin-less 2nd District instead of taking on Clay. Indeed, POLITICO reports that national Democratic leaders, specifically House No. 2 Steny Hoyer, are quietly encouraging Carnahan to avoid "a kamikaze mission against Clay" by helping him pursue other electoral options.

The Fair Voting Alternative

Time for an Honest and Fair System: These controversies demonstrate the way in which the current system is inadequate: it fails not only to represent accurately the people of Missouri, but it reduces voters to mere pawns in a grand political game designed to benefit party elites rather than the people. Especially in states affected by reapportionment, there is the impulse to engage in gerrymandering and other highly undemocratic maneuvering.

In contrast to the Missouri state legislature's politically motivated plan, fair voting puts voters first. Rather than use a winner-take-all system, which accentuates the effects of redistricting and encourages partisan games, FairVote has combined these winner-take-all, gerrymandered districts to form multi-member districts called "super-districts" in which a fair voting system will allow like-minded voters to elect candidates in proportion to their voting strength and, as a result, allow far more voters to elect a favored candidate. As our analysis will demonstrate, FairVote's super-district plan with a fair voting system generates competitive elections in every corner of the state; it also allows for fuller representation of the political and demographic dynamics of geographical areas: what we call "shared representation."

Several candidate-based forms of fair voting, notably choice voting and cumulative voting, have been upheld by the courts and fit well with our traditions. Choice voting, in which voters rank candidates in order of choice in at-large elections, helped break the power of urban political machines in New York and Cincinnati. It is used currently by Minneapolis in citywide elections. From 1870 to 1980, members of the Illinois House of Representatives were elected using cumulative voting, where voters can cast as many votes as there are seats, and nearly all of the districts elected both Democrats and Republicans in every election. Fair voting plans in super-districts are legal for congressional elections under the U.S. Constitution and have been upheld by the Supreme Court, but Congress would need to repeal a 1967 law mandating single-member districts.

Under the current winner-take-all system, candidates must receive over 50% of the vote to be sure of winning a seat. Consequently, substantial voting blocs are often left unrepresented. For instance, one party's candidate could get just one vote shy of the 50% threshold, and all of her voters would lose out on representation. Similarly, if a voter lives in a district that widely favors one party, that voter might feel like his vote does not matter, especially if that voter favors the less popular party.

With fair voting in super-districts, on the other hand, nominees from more than one party are nearly certain to represent a district, which enables a more accurate representation of the broad spectrum of political opinion. These multi-seat districts also lower the threshold for racial minorities to select a preferred candidate of their own.

Winning with Fair Voting in a Super-District: If FairVote were working from scratch, we could draw the super-district lines with more geographical compactness. Because we created the super-districts from the recently approved congressional districts, however, our super-districts also appear to look somewhat gerrymandered. Even so, the super-district approach demonstrates that full representation can be attained even within these highly gerrymandered confines.

Missouri 2011 Redistricting Plan Missouri Fair Voting Plan with Super-Districts

From the eight congressional districts in Missouri, the FairVote proposal creates two super-districts: one three-seat district and one five-seat district. Each congressional seat still represents approximately 748,616 people, but with a fair voting system, representation is far more likely to reflect the political opinion and demographic makeup of the state. In a three-seat district, like-minded voters are assured of a representative if they consist of at least 25% of the electorate, while in a five-seat district, like-minded voters are assured of a representative if they consist of at least 16.67% of the electorate.

Super-District Breakdown

Super-District	Number of House Seats	Population Per Seat	Threshold of Exclusion	Districts Used to Make SD
1	3	748616	25% + 1	4, 5, 6
2	5	748616	16.67% + 1	1, 2, 3, 7, 8

Partisanship Analysis: Based on the 2008 presidential election, Missouri has a partisanship index of 46.33% Democratic, a narrow margin reflecting its status as a competitive state in presidential elections. However, the recent plan passed by the state legislature does not reflect the close partisan split of the entire state. Based on district partisanship, the Missouri plan would result in six Republican seats (five safe and one leaning), two safe Democratic seats, and zero toss-ups. To put this in perspective, the statewide Democratic partisanship index of 46.33% should result in the Democratic Party winning at least three seats and the Republican Party coming away with four seats at a minimum, while an additional seat would swing to the party or individual candidate performing well that election cycle. Yet, the Missouri plan guarantees the Republicans more than their expected share. To win four seats, Democratic candidates would need to succeed in flipping two solidly Republican districts. This gerrymandered setup presents a daunting challenge for the Democrats every election year, regardless of the party's national momentum.

Missouri Plan's Partisanship Breakdown

District	Population Per Seat	Partisanship (D)	Safe Seats (D)	Leaning Seats (D)	Toss-Up	Leaning Seats (R)	Safe Seats (R)
1	748,616	77.24%	1	0	0	0	0
2	748,616	43.28%	0	0	0	1	0
3	748,616	39.89%	0	0	0	0	1
4	748,616	39.10%	0	0	0	0	1
5	748,615	59.02%	1	0	0	0	0
6	748,616	40.30%	0	0	0	0	1
7	748,616	32.52%	0	0	0	0	1
8	748,616	35.58%	0	0	0	0	1
Statewide	5,988,927	46.33%	2	0	0	1	5

*Partisanship percentages are based on an interpretation of the 2008 presidential election. Our source for the data is Daily Kos. The seats were allocated according to the following ranges: toss-up districts have a partisanship between 46% and 54%, leaning seats have a partisanship between 54% and 58%, and safe seats have a partisanship greater than 58%. This does not reflect incumbent advantages.

In stark contrast, a fair voting plan would accurately represent the state's partisan divide and provide representation to voters from all parts of the state. FairVote's super-district plan shows that both major parties would be well positioned to win at least three seats: one seat to each party in Super-District 1 and two seats apiece in Super-District 2. With an additional toss-up seat in each super-district, each party would have the opportunity to gain one or both of the swing seats, depending on the quality of their candidates and the national partisan swing.

FairVote's plan clearly offers a far more reflective representation of the state's political division than the 75% of representation Republicans would earn even when losing the statewide vote. It also increases voter interest since almost all Republican and Democratic voters can elect a candidate in their super-district, who represents their political views - and have a real choice within their party's candidates as well.

Once in Congress, representatives from opposing parties would share constituents of super-districts and, therefore, have new incentives to cooperate on at least some legislative initiatives. There also would be more representatives bridging the gap that currently exists between the major parties, as fair voting means a more balanced representation of the left, right, and center. As far as competition, the current Missouri plan offers zero swing districts; in the super-district plan, every voter would experience a competitive election.

While these partisan breakdowns are based on the current two-party duopoly, the FairVote proposal would open the door for third-party and independent candidates, unlike the single-member district, winner-take-all plan. Because challengers to the major parties are rarely able to acquire over 50% of the vote, their backers are left typically unrepresented. Fair voting methods lower the threshold and provide third parties a better chance to win seats. Fair voting is not just fair for Democrats and Republicans; it is fair for voters of all political opinions.

FairVote's Super-District Partisan Breakdown

Super-District	Number of Seats	Threshold of Exclusion	Partisanship (D)	Safe Seats (D)	Leaning Seats (D)	Toss-Up	Leaning Seats (R)	Safe Seats (R)
1	3	25% + 1	46.33%	1	0	1	0	1
2	5	16.67% + 1	46.34%	2	0	1	0	2
Statewide	8	-	46.33%	3	0	2	0	3

*The seats were allocated according to the following ranges: toss-up districts have a partisanship ±4% of the threshold, leaning seats have a partisanship 4-8% greater than the threshold, and safe seats have a partisanship greater than 8% of the threshold. This does not reflect incumbent advantages.

Race and Voting Power: When a racial minority group votes as a bloc and meets the threshold, it has the power to elect a strongly preferred candidate, although it may not choose necessarily a racial minority. To evaluate the racial impact of a state's redistricting plan, we tabulate the number of districts in which the voting age population (VAP) of a racial minority group exceeds the threshold to win a seat (50% + 1 vote). For districts where a racial minority group is within three percent of the threshold, we designate the seat as a strong "opportunity" to win.

In Missouri, the black VAP consists of nearly 11% of the statewide VAP, and despite the state's relatively small black population, two of Missouri's eight seats (25%) belong to African American Congress members, William Lacy Clay, Jr. (D-1) and Emanuel Cleaver II (D-5). Under Missouri's new plan, no district has a black VAP greater than the 50% threshold; however, as noted earlier, pundits generally regard the newly drawn 1^st Congressional District as the state's only majority-minority district. Latinos, for their part, currently make up less than three percent of the state's total population but have negligible influence in any single-member district.

Using our methodology to evaluate the racial dynamics of Missouri's plan, we would expect the white population in each district to have the voting power to elect a preferred candidate. Although the white VAP in Congressional District 1 maintains a plurality, blacks of voting age constitute nearly half (45.66%) of the district's total VAP, enabling that group to have significant weight in any election. Given this considerable influence, the district was the first in the state to elect an African American to the U.S. House (William Lacy Clay, Sr.) in 1968 and has continued to send an African American representative to Congress in every election since. In the 5^th Congressional District, currently represented by Emanuel Cleaver, there is another sizable black community (20.40%). In spite of the voting power that whites possess in each congressional district, the state is consistently friendly to electing representatives of color when running in strongly Democratic-leaning districts.

Missouri Plan Race Breakdown

District	Total Population	White VAP%	Black VAP%	Latino VAP%	Black Voters	Latino Voters
1	748,616	48.60%	45.66%	2.69%	0	0
2	748,616	92.21%	2.79%	1.88%	0	0
3	748,616	92.72%	3.63%	1.78%	0	0
4	748,616	91.90%	4.32%	2.66%	0	0
5	748,615	71.95%	20.40%	6.82%	0	0
6	748,616	93.04%	3.62%	2.68%	0	0
7	748,616	92.93%	1.52%	3.31%	0	0
8	748,616	93.39%	4.13%	1.28%	0	0
Statewide	5,988,927	84.54%	10.81%	2.89%	0	0

*Source for race voting age population data is the Missouri State Senate.

While the fair voting plan drastically shakes up the political landscape of Missouri's redistricting plan, it sustains the influence that black communities hold in the new map, even after combining the highly concentrated minority population in District 1 with other predominantly white districts. Similar to the black constituency's prospects for voting power in District 1, this group in Super-District 2 (11.61%) falls merely two percentage points below our threshold for an "opportunity" to win representation (13.67%). Just as District 5 consistently elects an African American representative to Congress, we would anticipate black voters in Super-District 2 to have the comparable influence in electing a candidate who best represents their interests. Super-District 1, which encompasses District 5, offers black voters significant influence (9.46% VAP in a super-district with a threshold of 25%), as candidates in congressional elections would presumably cater to the black community, given the competitive nature of super-district elections and the need to solidify relationships with large voting blocs.

FairVote's Super-District Race Breakdown

Super-District	Number of Seats	Threshold of Exclusion	White VAP%	Black VAP%	Latino VAP%	Black Voters	Latino Voters
1	3	25% + 1	85.61%	9.46%	4.06%	0	0
2	5	16.67% + 1	83.90%	11.61%	2.19%	0	0
Statewide	8	-	84.54%	10.81%	2.89%	0	0

Conclusion

Although Missouri Republicans clearly engineered a partisan gerrymander, electoral problems do not rest solely with Democrats and Republicans. Rather, the problem lies with the winner-take-all nature of single-member district elections, which allow district lines to determine most outcomes no matter how they are drawn. In this analysis, we have not touched the blatantly partisan lines that were our building blocks; we merely changed the rules and showed that fair voting provides immediate dividends to all voters.

If the redistricting games of winner-take-all continue, voters are likely to become even more disenchanted with our political system. Under Missouri's redistricting plan and many others like it across the country, a vast amount of voters are left with diminshed representation and no real choices. Many of these congressional elections lack competition or offer just two candidates to the diverse array of voters. It is also clear that one candidate cannot possibly reflect the makeup of everyone in a district, as winner-take-all assumes. Therefore, we need a new approach that will more accurately reflect the makeup of each state. By adopting fair voting methods in super-districts, we can attain a more representative democracy.

No More Gerrymanders: California's Commission Plan versus the Fair Voting Alternative

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:46:24 -0700

Summary:

For the first time in California's history, the Citizens Redistricting Commission has drawn the lines for congressional districts. Despite taking control away from partisan state legislators and sharply increasing potential competition in congressional elections, the commission's map still gives Democrats a clear advantage in 29 seats compared to only 12 for Republicans. Republicans have fought the new maps in court, and some racial minorities have expressed concerns as well.
The root of the worst problems associated with redistricting lies with winner-take-all elections, in which 50% + 1 of the vote can elect 100% of the representation. Fair voting systems, relying on a form of proportional representation, are a far better way to achieve public interest objectives and allow all voters to participate in meaningful elections.
As part of an ongoing series, FairVote has produced a "super-district" plan designed for elections with a fair voting system. Our California plan upholds U.S. Supreme Court rulings on apportionment while providing fair representation and voter choice for California voters. Fair voting plans in super-districts are legal for congressional elections under the U.S. Constitution, but Congress would need to repeal a 1967 law mandating single-member districts. State and cities often have the power to adopt fair voting systems under current law.
FairVote's fair voting plan for California would result in far more balanced representation and competitive elections.

The Political Context in California

California and the 2010 Census: From 2000 to 2010, California's population grew slightly, from 33.87 million to 37.25 million, for an increase of 10.0%, as compared to a rate of 13.8% from 1990 to 2000. This rate was roughly equivalent to the national average of 9.7%. California maintained its 53 seats, making 2010 the first Census since 1920 that the state had not increase the size of its U.S. House delegation. (From 1920 through 2000, the state's number of House seats skyrocketed from 11 to 53.).

Some conjectured that population shifts within the state helped congressional Republicans, as slow-growing, Democratic-heavy urban districts and coastal areas failed to keep pace with inland Republican-leaning regions. Racially, California is a 'no-majority' state, with non-Hispanic whites (40.1%) currently comprising a plurality. Asians (12.8%) posted the largest rate of growth of any group at just over 30%, while the Latino community (37.6%) - fast on track to becoming the most numerous group in the state - continues to increase appreciably as well. Non-Hispanic blacks held steady at roughly six percent of the population.

Although Democrats controlled all levels of government in Sacramento in 2001, super-majority requirements in redistricting gave Republicans shared power over maps. The process was a protracted affair, with legal challenges by disenchanted Latino interest groups extending the process until January 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a June 2002 California U.S. District Court ruling upholding the districts. Fearing that a citizen referendum or a state Supreme Court packed with Republican appointees might overturn an overtly partisan map, Democrats decided to collaborate with GOP state legislators n order to secure the required supermajority. As a result, both political parties essentially signed off on a deal to maintain the status quo.

And the status quo is what Californians received. In the five elections since 2001 redistricting, the partisan composition of California's U.S. House delegation changed by only once (2002: 33D, 20R; 2004: 33D, 20R; 2006: 34D, 19R; 2008: 34D, 19R; 2010: 34D, 19R). During the same period, only a stunning two of 253 incumbent representatives (0.8%) lost their bids for reelection, while just 14 of 265 contests (5.3%) were won by less than ten percentage points; 233 of these 265 (87.9%) races were either blowouts (20%+ margin of victory) or uncontested.

With Redistricting, a New Way of Doing Business in the Most Populous State: Although Jerry Brown is only the second Democratic governor since he had last been elected in 1978, California has become a strongly Democratic state. Arnold Schwarzenegger's election to the governorship in a 2003 post-recall special election and reelection in 2006 are the only recent examples of Republicans winning major statewide office, and Democrats' vote share in presidential races has grown steadily. In 2010, well-funded Republican candidates for U.S. Senate (Carly Fiorina) and governor (Meg Whitman) lost badly in their respective bids despite initial high expectations.

At the U.S. House level, however, California's delegation in 2010 again saw no change in terms of partisan composition, as voters returned all 51 incumbents who ran for reelection and stuck with the candidate representing the incumbent party in the remaining two open seats. Such stasis was clearly at odds with the discernibly anti-incumbent and anti-Democratic national trend in 2010, although a few Democratic candidates, such as Loretta Sanchez of the 47^th District and Jim Costa of the 20^th District, performed far below their 2008 numbers. Yet while the Californian congressional elections to the 112^th Congress were an aberration nationally, they nevertheless conformed to the state's post 2001-redistricting reputation for safe seats and commensurate political calcification.

This reputation for no-contest elections, which Governor Schwarzenegger famously captured with the quip, "We laugh at Putin in Russia...but there's more turnover in the Kremlin than...in California," caused voters to support recent ballot initiatives designed to reshape dramatically the way California draws its political boundaries. In 2008, a slim majority of voters approved Proposition 11, which took control of redistricting away from the state legislature and established an independent commission charged with crafting state legislative districts. In 2010, 61.3% of voters approved Proposition 20, which extended the jurisdiction of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission (CCRC) to include the drafting of congressional lines as well, and voted down Proposition 27, a measure designed to repeal the CCRC largely funded by the Democratic establishment.

California's Citizens Redistricting Commission and its Work: On February 20, 2011, the Justice Department pre-cleared California Proposition 20, making the new commission's oversight of redistricting official. Although 2011 marks the first time in California's history that citizens, rather than state legislators, will draw district boundaries, California joins a handful of other states nationwide employing a redistricting commission.

Very specific rules, designed to ensure the process is bipartisan and independent, govern both the body's composition and its work. First, the fourteen-member commission must contain an equal number of registered Republicans and Democrats (five each), as well as four independents /no affiliation voters. Second, the selection process is multi-tiered - government auditors select eight of the members (3R, 3D, and 2 independent) randomly from a pool of voters, while these eight commissioners, in turn, select the final six individuals (2R, 2D, and 2 independent). Third, once the maps have been drawn, nine of the 14 commissioners must approve - three from each party and three independents/no affiliates. Finally, lobbyists or individuals having given more than $2,000 in political donations in a two-year cycle may not serve on the CCRC's staff.

Despite these precautions, the CCRC was ultimately accused of partisanship, especially during the contracts phase of the project. Republicans cried foul when the commission tapped what they believed to be Democratic-leaning firms to produce maps and provide legal advice regarding minority rights and voting power. Tom Del Beccaro, chairman of the California GOP, warned that the CCRC's selection of such firms "defeat[ed] the very purpose of the commission's existence."

On July 29, the commission approved preliminary congressional maps by a 12-2 vote, moving the draft plans to a 14-day public review stage. Employing a wide range of glowing superlatives, the commissioners extolled the CCRC's work as "extraordinary," "unprecedented," and "enriching," noting that its maps "portend[ed] a brighter political future for California." Two weeks later, the CCRC formally certified these maps on August 15 and forwarded them to the secretary of state's office, after another 12-2 vote.

Arguing the CCRC had produced congressional maps advantaging Democratic candidates, California Republicans wasted little time in organizing a voter referendum to overturn the work of a commission they believed "political partisans" had "hijacked." The GOP, however, dropped its initial plan in late September, citing inadequate fundraising and lackluster enthusiasm among certain Republican members of the California U.S. House delegation, such as Minority Whip Kevin McCarthy; several GOP strategists contended the statewide referendum against the congressional map was a poor use of limited campaign resources - and potentially tacit acceptance of the fact that Democratic advantages are grounded in Democrats' overall edge in the state.

Undeterred, however, dissenting Republicans, led by former U.S. congressman George Radanovich , joined minority voters to file suit on September 29 with the California Supreme Court, alleging that some of the CCRC's congressional boundaries were in violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (1965). Republicans in the state have a history of working with black and Latino groups, recognizing that drawing districts with larger numbers of minority voters also produces surrounding districts that lean GOP. On October 22, the CCRC officially requested that the state Supreme Court dismiss the lawsuit, saying it had met the constitutional requirements and Voting Rights Act obligations governing redistricting. Four days later, on October 26, the Supreme Court - without comment - unanimously rejected the Radanovich suit as well as the GOP's request for an emergency stay that would have halted use of the maps.

The Fair Voting Alternative

Time for an Honest and Fair System: FairVote applauds the goals for a fair process embodied by having an independent commission governed by public interest criteria. Despite the precautions Californians have taken, controversies over the maps and the still-high number of uncompetitive districts in the new plan illustrates that the absence of partisan antics in the redistricting process does not lead us necessarily to fair elections. Redistricting, whether under the auspices of an independent commission or a partisan legislature, merely exaggerates a more fundamental structural issue outside the CCRC's purview: winner-take-all.

In contrast to any plan governed by winner-take-all plan, our fair voting alternative truly puts voters first. Rather than use a winner-take-all system, which exaggerates representation for certain groups, FairVote has combined the CCRC's single-member districts to form larger "super-districts." As an American form of proportional representation, this fair voting system will elect multiple representatives in each super-district and allow far more voters to choose a favored candidate. As our analysis demonstrates, FairVote's super-district plan with a fair voting system generates competitive elections in every corner of the state; it also allows for fuller representation of the political and demographic dynamics of geographical areas: what we call "shared representation."

Several candidate-based forms of fair voting, notably choice voting and cumulative voting, have been upheld by the courts and fit well with our traditions. Choice voting systems, in which voters rank candidates in order of choice in at-large elections, helped break the power of urban political machines in New York and Cincinnati. It is used currently by Minneapolis in citywide elections. From 1870 to 1980, members of the Illinois House of Representatives were elected using cumulative voting, where voters can cast as many votes as there are seats. Using this fair voting system, nearly all of the districts elected both Democrats and Republicans in every election.

Winning with Fair Voting in a Super-District: From the 53 congressional districts in California, the FairVote proposal creates 11 super-districts: ten five-seat districts and one three-seat district. Each congressional seat still represents approximately 702,905 people, but with a fair voting system, representation is far more likely to reflect the political opinion and demographic makeup of the state. In a five-seat district, like-minded voters are assured of a representative if they consist of at least 16.67% of the electorate, and in the only three-seat district, like-minded voters are assured of a representative if they consist of at least 25% of the electorate.

California 2011 Redistricting Plan

California Fair Voting Plan with Super-districts

Super-district Breakdown

Super-District	Number of House Seats	Population Per Seat	Threshold of Exclusion	Districts Used to Make SD
1	5	702904	16.67% + 1	38, 40, 43, 44, 47
2	5	702904	16.67% + 1	28, 29, 30, 34, 37
3	5	702906	16.67% + 1	32, 39, 45, 46, 48
4	5	702905	16.67% + 1	31, 35, 41, 42, 49
5	5	702905	16.67% + 1	36, 50, 51, 52, 53
6	5	702904	16.67% + 1	24, 25, 26, 27, 33
7	5	702905	16.67% + 1	11, 12, 13, 14, 15
8	5	702905	16.67% + 1	10, 16, 17, 18, 19
9	5	702905	16.67% + 1	3, 5, 6, 7, 9
10	5	702905	16.67% + 1	8, 20, 21, 22, 23
11	3	702905	25% + 1	1, 2, 4

Partisanship Analysis: Based on the 2008 presidential election, California has a partisanship index of 58.3% Democratic. However, the CCRC's plan does not reflect the partisan split of the entire state. Based on district partisanship, the commission's plan would allocate Democrats 29 seats (24 safe and 5 lean) and Republicans 12 seats (8 safe and 4 lean) with an additional 12 districts that could swing to either party. To put this in perspective, the statewide Republican partisanship index of 41.7% should generally result in Republicans winning 22 seats, yet the California plan creates only eight absolutely safe seats. To win those 22 seats, Republicans would need to hold on to their four leaning seats, as expected, and succeed in 10 of 12 toss-up districts. This presents a daunting challenge for the GOP every election year, regardless of the party's national momentum.

California Plan's Partisanship Breakdown, Summary

	Statewide Percentages	CCRC's Plan
Democrats	58.3%	24 Safe, 5 Lean
Republicans	41.7%	8 Safe, 4 Lean
Toss-Up	-	12

*Partisanship percentages are based on an interpretation of the 2008 presidential election. Our source for the data is from RedistrictingPartners.com The seats were allocated according to the following ranges: toss-up districts have a partisanship between 46% and 54%, leaning seats have a partisanship between 54% and 58%, and safe seats have a partisanship greater than 58%. This does not reflect incumbent advantages. Full district partisanship data located here.

In stark contrast, the FairVote super-district plan accurately represents the state's partisan divide, positioning each major party to win at least one seat in every super-district. Republicans would have a clear advantage to win 17 seats and be well-positioned to add between three to nine seats based on the quality of their candidates and the national partisan swing. Democrats would have a clear advantage to win 26 seats, a reasonable chance to add seven more and an outside chance of winning up to 36 seats.

FairVote's plan clearly offers a far more reflective representation of the state's political division than California's redistricting plan, which gives the Democratic Party a running start every election year. Fair voting also increases voter interest because almost all Republican and Democratic voters will be able to elect a candidate in their district, who represents their political views. Additionally, voters will have a real choice within their party's candidates, since each super-district election presents each party with a chance to win multiple seats.

Once in Congress, representatives from opposing parties would share constituents of super districts and, therefore, have new incentives to cooperate on at least some legislative initiatives. There also would be more representatives bridging the gap that currently exists between the major parties, as fair voting means a more balanced representation of the left, right, and center. As far as competition, the California plan offers at best 12 competitive districts; in the super-district plan, every voter would experience a competitive election.

FairVote's Super-district Partisan Breakdown

Super-District	Number of Seats	Threshold to Win	Partisanship (D)	Safe Seats (D)	Leaning Seats (D)	Toss-Up	Leaning Seats (R)	Safe Seats (R)
1	5	16.67% + 1	62.5%	3	0	0	1	1
2	5	16.67% + 1	66.8%	3	0	1	0	1
3	5	16.67% + 1	48.6%	2	0	1	0	2
4	5	16.67% + 1	51.3%	2	0	1	0	2
5	5	16.67% + 1	51.8%	2	0	1	0	2
6	5	16.67% + 1	51.8%	2	0	1	0	2
7	5	16.67% + 1	74.3%	3	1	0	0	1
8	5	16.67% + 1	61.1%	3	0	0	1	1
9	5	16.67% + 1	58.2%	3	0	0	0	2
10	5	16.67% + 1	45.6%	2	0	0	1	2
11	3	25% + 1	50.3%	1	0	1	0	1
Statewide	53	-	58.3%	26	1	6	3	17

*The seats were allocated according to the following ranges: toss-up districts have a partisanship ±4% of the threshold, leaning seats have a partisanship 4-8% greater than the threshold, and safe seats have a partisanship greater than 8% of threshold. This does not reflect incumbent advantages.

Race and Voting Power: When a racial minority group votes as a bloc and meets the threshold, it has the power to elect a strongly preferred candidate, although it may not choose necessarily a racial minority. California is one of the most racially diverse states in the country, yet the CCRC's redistricting plan does not reflect its demographic composition. To evaluate the racial impact of the California plan, we have tabulated the number of districts in which a racial minority group exceeds the threshold to win a seat (50% + 1 vote). For districts where a racial minority group is within three percent of the threshold, we have designated the seat as a strong "opportunity" to win.

The way the CCRC plan is currently constructed, white voters have a disproportionate advantage (32 seats + 2 opportunities, or 64%) to elect candidates of their preference, though their share of the citizen voting age population (CVAP) sits at just over 55%. The Latino community represents 23% of the state's CVAP but has opportunities to elect a preferred candidate in only nine districts (7 seats + 2 opportunities, or 17%). African Americans and Asian Americans may have a significant presence in some districts, which, combined with strong incumbents, can lead to victories for candidates of these racial groups. But these communities are not anywhere close to meeting the 50% threshold in any single district, which severely jeopardizes their chances of receiving representation in the state's congressional delegation. In an additional ten districts, no racial group meets the threshold or falls within our opportunity category, so racial minority groups have increased chances to elect preferred candidates, provided they can build a diversified coalition of voters.

California Plan Race Breakdown, Summary

Column1	Statewide	CCRC's Plan
White CVAP	55.4%	32 + 2 Opportunities
Black CVAP	7.3%	0
Latino CVAP	23.3%	7 + 2 Opportunities
Asian CVAP	12.0%	0
???	-	10

*Race data for each district can be found here.

Though the CCRC plan makes significant strides to extend voting power to multiple racial groups, the fair voting plan offers opportunities more reflective of the state's racial composition. In the super-district plan, white voters have the voting power to win 30 seats (57%), while Latinos broaden their voting power to 11 seats (9 seats + 2 opportunities, or 21%). Unlike the CCRC's map, the fair voting plan also gives voting power to African Americans and Asian Americans. African Americans are well-positioned to win at least one seat, and make up more than half of what it takes to win a seat in four additional super-districts. Asian American voters jump from voting power in zero districts to voting power over three seats, with their numbers more than half of what it takes to win a seat in seven more districts. Both these racial minority groups and Latino voters would be competitive for many of the eight seats in which no racial group meets the threshold or falls within the opportunity category

FairVote's Super-District Race Breakdown

Super-District	Number of Seats	Threshold to Win	White CVAP	Black CVAP	Latino CVAP	Asian CVAP
1	5	16.67% + 1	27.5%	16.3%	42.2%	12.2%
2	5	16.67% + 1	46.4%	11.8%	28.6%	12.0%
3	5	16.67% + 1	52.9%	2.7%	25.8%	17.4%
4	5	16.67% + 1	51.4%	8.6%	31.8%	6.3%
5	5	16.67% + 1	60.7%	5.5%	23.2%	8.6%
6	5	16.67% + 1	62.7%	4.4%	19.2%	12.3%
7	5	16.67% + 1	52.5%	10.7%	12.5%	22.3%
8	5	16.67% + 1	53.1%	4.2%	22.7%	18.3%
9	5	16.67% + 1	62.0%	9.0%	15.2%	11.1%
10	5	16.67% + 1	58.2%	5.6%	29.4%	4.5%
11	3	25% + 1	84.8%	1.7%	7.2%	2.9%
Statewide	53	-	55.4%	7.3%	23.3%	12.0%

Conclusion

California's plan is clear evidence that even an independent redistricting commission cannot alleviate the problems of our U.S. House elections. Although partisan gerrymandering receives the most attention, the undemocratic nature of our elections is endemic to the winner-take-all voting system - a structural issue the CCRC was not allowed to change. In this analysis, we have not touched CCRC's lines that were our building blocks; we merely changed the rules and showed that fair voting provides immediate dividends to all voters, empowering them to choose representatives who truly reflect their perspectives.

If the redistricting process paired with a winner-take-all rule continues, voters are likely to become disenchanted with our political system. Under California's redistricting plan and many others like it across the country, a vast amount of voters are left unrepresented. Many of these congressional elections lack competition or offer just two candidates to the diverse array of voters. It is clear that one candidate cannot possibly reflect the makeup of her district, as winner-take-all assumes, so we need an alternative to make full representation possible. By adopting fair voting methods in super-districts, we can attain a more representative democracy.

Tunisians Hold Arab Spring’s First Vote

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 08:37:47 -0700

Tunisians Hold Arab Spring’s First Vote

Tunisia, last month held elections for representatives to the Constituent Assembly, a historic milestone nine months after the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Although the exact rate of participation is contested, it appears to have been around 80%. The election is seen as a democratic success for new Tunisia, with some 4.1 million registered voters voting to select the members of the Constituent Assembly – using a method of proportional representation that ensured nearly every participant elected someone, and no one faction earned the winner-take-all power to dominate other factions.

Tunisians have fulfilled their duty peacefully and with great pride, whether in the capital or in provincial towns. European Union observers saluted the election’s “transparency.” Clearly, the strong desire of Tunisians to be governed by democratically elected authorities guided the electoral process.

The Assembly is responsible for drafting the new Constitution of the Second Republic and appointing a transitional government. The 217 members of the Constituent Assembly have one year to mature and to discuss the draft constitution, while also monitoring the actions of the transitional government.

Additionally, the Assembly will define the contours of the Tunisian State, outlining its foundations, proclaiming the people’s rights, and creating mechanisms for the realization and protection of freedoms.

The Election – In Focus

Elections to the General Assembly were held using a party list form of proportional voting in 33 districts, with 27 at home and six abroad. Within each constituency, each political party submited a list of candidates. Two important rules governed the composition of party lists. First, parties must alternate between male and female candidates; second, parties were prohibited from running candidates previously associated with the ousted Ben Ali regime. In addition to the party lists, voters were able to opt for an independent candidate.

To win a seat, a party or independent candidate must meet the district-specific threshold, found by dividing the district’s total number of voters by its number of seats. For example, if a district has 160,000 voters who cast ballots and eight seats, a party must obtain 20,000 votes to elect one member. After seats have been allocated to parties crossing the threshold, any remaining seat is awarded to the party with the highest below-threshold total.

Called the Hagenbach-Bischoff method of proportional voting, this rule not only helps minor parties win representation, but also ensures that no major party wins an overwhelming victory. The proportional nature of the Tunisian election is highly significant. Rather than use a winner-take-all system similar to those found in many Western democracies, which exaggerates representation for certain parties, proportional voting allows for fuller representation of the political and demographic dynamics of the country.

How Voting Systems Affect Outcomes – The Ennahdha Example

Ennahdha, a conservative Islamist political party with a name that means renaissance in Arabic, won the most seats in the election, having obtained 41.47% of the vote as well as the largest vote share in every district. With a fair voting system in place, Ennahdha won Y% of the seats.

Nevertheless, such a strong result means it is now the main political force in the country, capable of affecting the future development of the Constitution and the government. Ennahdha, led by Rachid Ghannouchi (who spent 22 years exiled in London), is an admirer of the AKP in Turkey, a conservative party that desires a greater role for Islam in politics.

Ennahdha’s detractors feared that an overwhelming victory for the party at the polls would mean an end to Tunisia’s secular history, despite Ennahdha’s repeated statements that it would not institute Sharia law. Whatever Ennahdha’s true intentions, it is important to understand that the election’s proportional rules made it far more difficult for any party to dominate the incoming Constituent Assembly. This is because proportional representation gives voice to smaller parties and prevents a major party from winning a share of seats greater than its share of the vote.

Under the proportional voting system, the result of the election was as follows: Ennahdha 90 seats, Congress for Republic (CPR) 30 seats, Ettakatol 21 seats, and 76 seats to other parties – 109 seats are necessary for a parliamentary majority. Ennahdha’s failure to win a majority of seats means that it must now form a coalition with another party. It has expressed its intention to form an alliance with the the secular CPR party. "We are ready,” Larayd Ali, an executive committee member of Ennahdha, said, “to form an alliance with the Congress for the Republic…because our visions are not so different.”

Importantly, under a winner-take-all system, Ennahdha likely would have won a majority of seats, meaning it would not have needed to form a coalition government. In that CPR will force Ennahdha to pursue more moderate policy that is reflective of what most Tunisians want, it seems the proportional representation system is the best answer to some Tunisians’ worries of possible overeach by the Islamist party.

Votes to Seat in One District

To better understand the importance of voting systems and the way in which rules affect outcomes, consider the example of the Tunisia vote that took place in France 1, where Tunisian voters in the north of France voted.

In this district, there were 67,280 voters and five seats to the Assembly up for grabs. In the table below, we see the seat distribution per party under the different voting systems. Under a proportional rule, the threshold to win one guaranteed seat in France 1 is 13,457 (20% +1). Four parties receive seats: Ennahdha’s 22,672 votes give it one seat, and its remaining 9,216 votes, being greater than the total of any other party, give it the first remainder seat. The next remainder seat went to CPR, then to Ettakatol, and the last to PDM.

Conversely, under a winner-take-all rule, Ennahdha would have been allocated all five seats – in other words, 100% of representation for 33.7% of the vote. All other parties – CPR, Ettakatol, PDM – would receive nothing, a highly undemocratic result.

Party	Voters	Percentage	Seats with PRV	Seats with WTA
ENNAHDHA	22,672	33.7%	2	5
CPR	8445	12.6%	1	0
ETTAKATOL	7571	11.3%	1	0
PÔLE DEMOCRATIQUE MODERNISTE	5555	8.3%	1	0
Other parties with no seat	23,037	34.2%	0	0
TOTAL	67,280	100.0%

Conclusion

It is important to remember that Tunisians triggered the first spark of the Arab revolution of the 21st century. By choosing a proportional election rule over winner-take-all, Tunisians have shown the world what real democracy can and should be. The region’s next elections will occur in Egypt in late November, which will employ a hybrid of winner-take-all and proportional representation. In Lebanon, which is not concerned by protest movements , the interior minister, Charbel Mrwan, recently presented a bill for the adoption of proportional voting, while proportional representation is a key topic of concern in other Arab nations like Jordan and Yemen. The Tunisian election has been a lesson in democracy that, with luck, could inspire and serve as a blueprint for oppressed Arabs in other countries who harbor democratic ambitions.

No More Gerrymanders: Georgia's Partisan Plan versus the Fair Voting Alternative

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 13:11:56 -0700

Summary:

Lawmakers in Georgia have recently passed a congressional redistricting plan that gives Republican candidates a strong advantage in 10 of 14 seats and protects nearly all incumbents.
The root of the worst problems associated with redistricting lies with winner-take-all elections, in which 50% + 1 of the vote can elect 100% of the representation. Fair voting systems, relying on a form of proportional representation, are a far better way to achieve public interest objectives and allow all voters to participate in meaningful elections.
As part of an ongoing series, FairVote has produced a "super-district" plan designed for elections with a fair voting system. Our Georgia plan upholds U.S. Supreme Court rulings on apportionment while providing fair representation and voter choice for Georgia voters. Fair voting plans in super-districts are legal for congressional elections under the U.S. Constitution, but Congress would need to repeal a 1967 law mandating single-member districts. State and cities often have the power to adopt fair voting systems under current law.
FairVote's fair voting plan for Georgia would result in far more balanced representation and competitive elections.

Political Context in Georgia

Georgia and the 2010 Census: From 2000 to 2010, Georgia's population grew robustly, from 8.19 million to 9.69 million, for an increase of 18.3%, as compared to a rate of 26.4% from 1990 to 2000. This rate was significantly above the national average of 9.7%. As a result, Georgia gained one U.S. House seat in congressional reapportionment, going from 13 seats to 14, which continued a positive trend in its number of House seats dating back to the 1980 Census.

Internally, population shifts appear to help congressional Republicans; the rural areas of northern Georgia have driven the state's population growth, as Democratic-leaning urban centers have stagnated. Of the state's five largest cities - Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, Savannah, and Athens - only Athens posted growth over five percent; Macon, the state's seventh largest incorporated place, actually saw its population decline. Racially, Georgia remains majority white (55.9%), with an appreciable percentage increase for the black (30.0%) and Latino communities (8.8%), the latter of which nearly doubled.

Redistricting in 2001 was highly contentious as Democrats survived racial and regional infighting to craft an ambitiously partisan map; the Democratic plan was designed to reduce the state's 8-3 GOP U.S. House advantage. Viewed by some as an overreach, the U.S. District Court in D.C. upheld the plan. Democrats picked up the state's two new seats and ultimately held 6 of 13 seats in 2006-2010 before falling back to five seats in 2010. Even so, in the five congressional elections since 2001, only seven of 65 (10.8%) seats were won by less than ten percentage points, while 53 (81.5%) contests were blowouts (20%+ margin of victory) or uncontested.

Republicans, in Control, Push through Partisan Redistricting Plan: Alhough Democrats won every governor's race from 1872 to 2002, Georgia has now become a predominantly Republican state. Democrats haven't won a federal statewide election since 1996, when disabled Vietnam veteran Max Cleland joined the U.S. Senate. In 2008 Barack Obama ran stronger than many expected, finishing six percentage points behind John McCain, and incumbent U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss finished below 50% of the vote. But Chambliss won his December 2008 runoff easily and in 2010, Nathan Deal defeated former governor Roy Barnes by 10%..

Democratic officeholders at the U.S. House level struggled in 2010, with the 8^th District's Jim Marshall - one of the most conservative Democrats in the 111^th Congress - falling to Austin Scott in 2010. Sanford Bishop and John Barrow barely held onto their seats.

Having claimed the governorship and majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, Republicans ensured they would exercise control over the drawing of district boundaries, lines capable of locking in a GOP advantage at the U.S. House level for a decade. This year marks the first time in Georgia history that the Republican Party will control the congressional redistricting process.

Republicans in the Georgia General Assembly made their plan public on August 22, with each chamber, according to The Atlanta Constitution Journal, "moving quickly on proposals favorable to the Legislature's Republican majority." Ignoring Democratic protestations that the proposed map would dilute racial minority voting power, the Georgia House on August 25 passed an amended version of the plan along party lines, by a vote of 110-60, receiving concurrence from the Senate six days later, 34-21. Governor Deal signed the new lines into law on September 7, insisting the map"honor[ed] the sacred principle of 'one person, one vote.'"

Georgia, with its history of racial discrimination, is among the states that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (1965) requires to obtain federal approval for changes to its state election laws and district boundaries. Governor Deal and Attorney General Sam Olens decided to seek "pre-clearance" for their redistricting maps in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. rather than from the Department of Justice. In 2001, Georgia Democrats under Barnes employed a similar strategy.

Partisan Effects of the Republican Redistricting Plan: Looking at the partisan implications of the map, Republicans have "packed" Democrats into four redrawn districts in order to create safe or lean-GOP districts in other parts of the state. The GOP has positioned itself to take 10 of 14 seats, even in years when Democrats win the statewide vote.

The most striking aspect of the plan is the GOP's clear targeting of John Barrow - the Deep South's (SC, GA, AL, MS, LA) last remaining white U.S. House Democrat. Under the new map, Barrow's 12^th District would become overwhelmingly Republican, losing liberal Savannah, from where Barrow derives much of his support, to Republican Jack Kingston's southeastern 1^st District, while picking up Republican-leaning Augusta. "Barrow is a tough man to bring down," The Washington Post notes, but such a "staggering shift" in the partisan composition of his constituency means he is a "marked man."

Although Barrow, currently of Savannah, is not constitutionally required to live in the district he represents, tradition and political expediency leave him with little choice but to move to Augusta; previously, the GOP's 2006 mid-Census fine-tuning of redistricting had caused Barrow to abandon his home in Athens. Barrow has assailed the map, saying that it "reflects a rigging of the district lines in order to produce a predetermined outcome." Republican state representative Lee Anderson will be Barrow's likely general election opponent.

Elsewhere, the plan squeezes the state's newly awarded fourteenth constituency - though branded as the 9^th District - into northeastern Georgia, shifting the old districts of GOP representatives Phil Gingrey, Tom Graves, and Paul Broun. Graves - who took over Governor Deal's former seat - now lives in the 14^th District, having shed Hall County, the home of Deal and Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle. Not surprisingly, Hall County state representative Doug Collins, a purported "close ally" of the governor, has announced he will run in the new 9^th District.

Finally, the GOP apparently decided to spare Sanford Bishop after his narrow win in 2010. His 2^nd District is now over 50% black; previously, Bishop's district had been approximately 47% black. Although the map thus creates a fourth majority-minority district, Democrats have accused Republicans of having "bleached" surrounding districts by packing blacks into four constituencies, thereby reducing the potential influence of the black community in other areas of the state. Republicans have countered that "minority influence districts" are not protected under the Voting Rights Act.

The Fair Voting Alternative

Time for an Honest and Fair System: These controversies demonstrate the way in which the current system is inadequate: it fails not only to represent accurately the people of Georgia, but reduces voters to mere pawns in a grand political game designed to benefit party elites rather than the people. Especially in states affected by reapportionment, there is the impulse to engage in gerrymandering and other highly undemocratic maneuvering.

In contrast to the Georgia state legislature's politically motivated plan, fair voting puts voters first. Rather than use a winner-take-all system, which accentuates the effects of redistricting and encourages partisan jockeying, FairVote has combined these winner-take-all, gerrymandered districts to form multi-member constituencies called "super-districts." As our analysis will demonstrate, FairVote's super-district plan with a fair voting system generates competitive elections in every corner of the state; it also allows for fuller representation of the political and demographic dynamics of geographical areas: what we call "shared representation."

With fair voting in super-districts, on the other hand, it is nearly certain that candidates from at least two parties will represent a district, which enables a more accurate representation of the broad spectrum of political opinion. These multi-seat districts also lower the threshold for racial minorities to select a preferred candidate of their own.

Winning with fair voting in a super-district: If FairVote were working from scratch, we could draw the super-district lines with more geographical compactness. Because we created the super-districts from the recently approved congressional districts, however, our super-districts also appear to look rather gerrymandered. Even so, the super-district approach demonstrates that full representation can be attained even within these highly gerrymandered confines.

Georgia 2011 Redistricting Plan Georgia Fair Voting Plan with Super-Districts

From the 14 congressional districts in Georgia, the FairVote proposal creates four super-districts: three three-seat districts and one five-seat district. Each congressional seat still represents approximately 691,975 people, but with a fair voting system, representation is far more likely to reflect the political opinion and demographic makeup of the state. In a three-seat district, like-minded voters are assured of a representative if they consist of at least 25% of the electorate, while in a five-seat district, like-minded voters are assured of a representative if they consist of at least 16.67% of the electorate.

Super-district Breakdown

Super-District	Number of House Seats	Population Per Seat	Threshold of Exclusion	Districts Used to Make SD
1	3	691975	25% + 1	3, 13, 14
2	3	691975	25% + 1	9, 10, 12
3	3	691975	25% + 1	1, 2, 8
4	5	691975	16.67% + 1	4, 5, 6, 7, 11

Partisanship Analysis: Based on the 2008 presidential election, Georgia has a partisanship index of 43.79% Democratic. However, the recent plan passed by the state legislature does not reflect accurately the political composition of the entire state and grossly exaggerates Republican influence. Based on district partisanship, the Georgia plan would result in ten safe Republican seats, four Democratic seats (three safe, one leaning), and no toss-ups. To put this in perspective, the statewide Republican partisanship index of 56.21% should result in the GOP winning only eight seats, yet the Georgia plan is designed to guarantee Republicans two more seats than their expected share. Democrats, on the other hand, should win at least five seats, but they are only given the opportunity for four. To win at least five seats, Democratic candidates would need to succeed in flipping a gerrymandered, safe Republican district.

Additionally, Georgia's plan produces uncompetitive elections all over the state: 13 out of the 14 districts are projected as safe victories for one party or the other. Over the next decade, Democratic voters living in the ten safely Republican districts will have no shot at electing a representative who reflects their ideological preference, likewise for any Republican residents in the three urban Atlanta districts, which have a heavy Democratic tilt. There is just one district that might offer a competitive election, but it requires the Republicans to perform well in a Democratic-leaning district.

Georgia Plan's Partisanship Breakdown

District	Population Per Seat	Partisanship (D)	Safe Seats (D)	Leaning Seats (D)	Toss-Up	Leaning Seats (R)	Safe Seats (R)
1	691974	41.12%	0	0	0	0	1
2	691976	54.54%	0	1	0	0	0
3	691974	30.73%	0	0	0	0	1
4	691976	69.86%	1	0	0	0	0
5	691976	81.08%	1	0	0	0	0
6	691975	36.95%	0	0	0	0	1
7	691975	35.93%	0	0	0	0	1
8	691976	34.52%	0	0	0	0	1
9	691975	21.20%	0	0	0	0	1
10	691976	35.59%	0	0	0	0	1
11	691975	31.57%	0	0	0	0	1
12	691975	40.56%	0	0	0	0	1
13	691976	63.81%	1	0	0	0	0
14	691974	24.81%	0	0	0	0	1
Statewide	9,687,653	43.79%	3	1	0	0	10

*Partisanship percentages are based on an interpretation of the 2008 presidential election. Our source for the data is DailyKos.com . The seats were allocated according to the following ranges: toss-up districts have a partisanship between 46% and 54%, leaning seats have a partisanship between 54% and 58%, and safe seats have a partisanship greater than 58%. This does not reflect incumbent advantages.

In stark contrast, the FairVote super-district plan accurately represents the state's partisan divide. FairVote's super-district plan shows that both major parties have the opportunity to win at least one seat in every super-district. Republicans would have a clear advantage to win seven seats and be well positioned to add between one to two seats based on the quality of their candidates and the national partisan swing. Democrats would have a clear advantage in four districts and a reasonable chance to add up to one to two more seats.

In addition to providing more accurate partisan representation, FairVote's plan triggers other positive effects: it sparks voter interest and helps to repair the emergent ideological divide between the left and the right. Almost all Republican and Democratic voters will be able to elect a candidate in their district, who represents their political views. Voters will also have a real choice within their party's candidates, since each super-district election presents each party with a chance to win multiple seats. As far as competition, the current Georgia plan offers zero competitive districts; in the super-district plan, every voter would experience a competitive election. Once in Congress, representatives from opposing parties would share constituents of super-districts and, therefore, have new incentives to cooperate on at least some legislative initiatives. Since multiple candidates of a political party are able to win office under the fair voting plan, there will be more opportunities for moderate candidates to win office and contribute their temperate message to the political forum.

FairVote's Super-district Partisan Breakdown

Super-District	Number of Seats	Threshold of Exclusion	Partisanship (D)	Safe Seats (D)	Leaning Seats (D)	Toss-Up	Leaning Seats (R)	Safe Seats (R)
1	3	25% + 1	40.84%	1	0	0	0	2
2	3	25% + 1	32.56%	0	1	0	0	2
3	3	25% + 1	43.47%	1	0	0	1	1
4	5	16.67% + 1	51.93%	2	0	1	0	2
Statewide	14	-	43.79%	4	1	1	1	7

Race and Voting Power: When a racial minority group votes as a bloc and meets the threshold, it has the power to elect a strongly preferred candidate, although it may not choose necessarily a racial minority. Under Georgia's new plan, there are three districts with a black voting age population (VAP) greater than 50% and an additional "opportunity," which has a black VAP within three percentage points of the threshold. Over the next ten years, black voters will be positioned well to maintain voting power in these four districts. Latinos, for their part, currently make up over seven percent of the state's total population but have negligible influence in any single-member district.

Georgia Plan Race Breakdown

District	Total Population	Black VAP%	Latino VAP%	Black Voting Power	Latino Voting Power
1	691974	28.35%	4.95%	0	0
2	691976	48.91%	4.03%	1 Opportunity	0
3	691974	21.96%	4.35%	0	0
4	691976	55.36%	8.15%	1	0
5	691976	56.56%	6.87%	1	0
6	691975	12.36%	11.99%	0	0
7	691975	17.10%	16.76%	0	0
8	691976	28.17%	4.85%	0	0
9	691975	6.41%	8.95%	0	0
10	691976	23.74%	3.96%	0	0
11	691975	14.97%	9.26%	0	0
12	691975	32.77%	4.51%	0	0
13	691976	52.89%	8.70%	1	0
14	691974	7.97%	8.13%	0	0
Statewide	9,687,653	29.15%	7.49%	3 + 1 Opportunity	0

While the Georgia plan offers opportunities for African Americans in four of the state's 14 districts, under the fair voting plan, there is a real possibility to have the black community represented in all four super-districts. Currently, representation of the black community centers around three urban Atlanta districts, but a super-district plan would allow representation that extends throughout all regions of the state. Our fair voting system combines the Georgia legislature's highly concentrated majority-minority districts with predominantly white constituencies, while maintaining at least the same number of opportunities for the black community. In Super-Districts 1, 3, and 4, the black VAP surpasses the threshold required to win a seat. Yet another opportunity exists in Super-District 3, where a second seat representing the black community lies within three percentage points of the threshold. In Super-District 2, black voting power falls just below our opportunity category. Nevertheless, black voters have significant influence at 21% in a super-district with a 25% threshold.

If the Georgia congressional delegation proportionally reflected the demographics of the state, the Latino community would have the voting power to elect one preferred candidate. Under this fair voting plan, the Latino community does not surpass the threshold in any super-district, but it does have significant presence in Super-District 4, where its 11% VAP just misses the super-district's 16.67% threshold. Given the competitive nature of super-district elections, candidates in Super-District 4 would presumably cater to the Latino community.

FairVote's Super-District Race Breakdown

Super-District	Number of Seats	Threshold of Exclusion	Black VAP%	Latino VAP%	Black Voting Power	Latino Voting Power
1	3	25% +1	27.38%	7.04%	1	0
2	3	25% + 1	20.95%	5.81%	0	0
3	3	25% + 1	35.12%	4.61%	1 + 1 Opportunity	0
4	5	16.67% + 1	31.55%	10.52%	1	0
Statewide	14	-	29.15%	7.49%	3 + 1 Opportunity	0

Conclusion

Although Georgia Republicans clearly engineered a partisan gerrymander, electoral problems do not rest solely with Democrats and Republicans. Rather, the problem lies with the winner-take-all nature of single-member district elections, which allow district lines to determine most outcomes no matter how they are drawn. In this analysis, we have not touched the blatantly partisan lines that were our building blocks; we merely changed the rules and showed that fair voting provides immediate dividends to all voters.

If the redistricting games of winner-take-all continue, voters are likely to become even more disenchanted with our political system. Under Georgia's redistricting plan and many others like it across the country, a vast amount of voters are left unrepresented. Many of these congressional elections lack competition or offer just two candidates to the diverse array of voters. It is clear that one candidate cannot possibly reflect the makeup of her district, as winner-take-all assumes. Therefore, we need a new approach that will more accurately reflect the residents of each state. By adopting fair voting methods in super-districts, we can attain a more representative democracy.

Occupy and Democracy Reforms: A Match Made in Heaven?

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:21:43 -0700

The Occupy movement has gone national and even international after its start near Wall Street. It has pretty much every organization with a pet cause trying to ride its coattails right now. Whether you’re an environmentalist, anti-capitalist, pro-capitalist, union member, or even an election reformer (!) you’re trying to figure out how you can capitalize on Occupy for your issue’s gain. Now, this is understandable because Occupy has a unique energy, and it’s a forum that’s very open to discussion and new ideas. One of the reasons for this is that there are people in the Occupy movement who are supportive of a plethora of different issues, and the whole point of Occupy is for them to be able to express their viewpoints.

I don’t like the way some organizations are looking at Occupy with hungry eyes, salivating over all those potential volunteers. However, since I’m an election reform nerd, I’m going to do my best to make the case to Occupiers around the country why democracy reforms, specifically proportional representation or “fair voting” and ranked choice voting (instant runoff voting), are ideal issues for Occupiers to support.

We’ve seen several videos, tweets, blogs, and forum posts from Occupiers in the past few weeks supporting proportional representation and instant runoff voting. In Portland, OR, the Occupy Portland General Assembly recently voted to support instant runoff voting.

There have also been various discussions and teach-ins about proportional representation and instant runoff voting in other cities like Boston as well. It makes a lot of sense for anyone with dissenting political views with an interest in electoral politics--the winner-take-all wall can be a rigid barrier.

Now, as I said, there are obviously just as many tweets, blogs, and videos from Occupiers supporting other issues. But democracy reforms have the unique ability to challenge the status quo in a way that fits in very well with the goals of the Occupy movement. It’s a nonpartisan solution to inequality that challenges corporate influence in politics by changing the system to focus more on the voter and less on the candidate. I think a lot of people, not just those in Occupy, feel that right now our political structures aren’t set up for our voices to be heard. Changing the structure of our electoral system is the first step to creating a space for more voices and points of view within our political process. Maintaining the system we currently have- a stilted, two-party system with low voter turnout isn’t an option any more.

Democracy reform would also provide an alternative for Occupy itself. Right now Occupy in most cities is run by consensus. If the cities want to connect to be a larger movement, running a nationwide organization by consensus seems extremely difficult. Using a proportional representation system within the Occupy movement would be a great alternative to a traditional top-down, winner-take-all decision-making model traditionally used by unions, environmental organizations, and other non-profits that are becoming extremely interested in the Occupy movement. Having proportional representation within Occupy would also be a safeguard against what a lot of people are starting to fear: that the movement gets co-opted by the Democratic establishment for the upcoming election.

Conventional wisdom right now is still that Occupy is a fad. I don’t believe that at all. If you’re buying into the notion that “there is no clear message” and “they’re just a bunch of hippies in a park” I recommend that you listen to the beginning of this excellent podcast that has a lot of interviews from people occupying Wall Street.

I think that Occupy will morph into something huge, even if the way that it looks a year from now is very different from the structure in place now. Occupy has the chance to create a model for the ideal American democracy. After all, in Occupy there’s no Electoral College, no campaign finance laws, no single-member districts, and no history of a structure of elections that keeps people out instead of bringing them in.

No More Gerrymanders: Transforming Maine into One At-Large Super District

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 07:41:17 -0700

Highlights

Redistricting, which occurs every ten years, ensures political lines reflect population changes and that each district has approximately the same number of residents per seat.
Lawmakers in Maine are fiercely debating how to redraw the boundaries of the state's two U.S. congressional districts in the wake of the 2010 Census. Both political parties seek new maps favorable to their candidates, a process that could affect not only the current 2-0 Democratic U.S. House majority, but possibly also an Electoral College vote at the presidential level. According to state law, the 15-member bipartisan Legislative Apportionment Committee draws new boundaries. Both chambers of the state legislature must approve a plan by a two-thirds vote before it becomes law.
The controversies associated with redistricting are products of our winner-take-all elections, in which 50.01% of voters can elect 100% of representation. Winner-take-all rules marginalize like-minded voters of a political minority no matter their relative numerical strength, thereby depressing turnout and providing inadequate representation.
As part of an ongoing project, FairVote has produced a "super district" map designed for election with a proportional voting system. Our proportional plan upholds U.S. Supreme Court rulings on apportionment while guaranteeing competitive voter choice and fairer representation. Because Maine has only two congressional seats, our efforts to bring truly fair representation to the state are somewhat limited. Nevertheless, our plan would end gerrymandering and would result in more nuanced voter choice than possible under the current winner-take-all system.
Proportional voting plans are legal under the U.S. Constitution, but would require Congress to repeal a 1967 law mandating single-member districts.

The Political Context in Maine

Maine and the 2010 Census: From 2000 to 2010, Maine's population grew slightly, from 1.27 million to 1.33 million, for an increase of 4.2%. This rate, while below the national average of 9.7%, nevertheless outperformed the Northeast's 3.2%, with only New Hampshire and Connecticut besting the state in the region. Maine emerged from the reapportionment process having neither lost nor gained any congressional seats.

As is inevitable, the last decade has seen the populations of the two districts fall out equilibrium; the 2010 Census showed the more populous First District having 668,515 residents and the Second 659,846, a difference of 8,669. Due to Supreme Court rulings that require a state's congressional districts to be equal in population, redistricting is necessary to bring the districts back into balance.

Courts Order Accelerated Redistricting Timetable: Although state law stipulates the legislature need not produce new maps until 2013, plaintiffs, purportedly with Republican backing, arguing that population discrepancies between the districts necessitated changes in time for the 2012 elections, as is the norm around the country. In June, the U.S. District Court in Portland agreed and ordered the redistricting to occur this year.

State Democrats, satisfied with current congressional districts and having a stake in maintaining the present 2-0 Democratic majority, opposed the court's decision. The GOP welcomed the ruling as a significant boost to their electoral prospects at the congressional level. The state legislature has until September 30 to complete the task; Governor Paul LePage (R) has scheduled a special legislative session to begin on September 27, and the Maine Legislature has formed a bipartisan commission based on existing state law.

In 2003, redistricting proved a partisan affair with the state legislature unable to achieve the required two-thirds approval of both chambers for any proposed map, an impasse that forcing action by the Maine Supreme Court. The looming 2011 battle promises to be equally acrimonious as both parties jockey for position.

Partisan Factors - Republican Proposal Calls for Sweeping Changes: Although the GOP has enjoyed continued success at the U.S. Senate level and, in 2010, took over the governor's mansion and both chambers of the legislature, it has not elected its candidates to the U.S. House since 1994. Since 1987, Democrats have held the First District for all but two years (1995-1997), while in the Second, Republican ascendancy ended in 1995 when voters sent then-Rep. Olympia Snowe to the Senate.

Republicans, now controlling the state capitol for the first time in nearly a half century, are hoping to exercise their newfound power over the redistricting process. Despite the modest population differences between the state's two congressional districts, the GOP has proposed an opportunistic map for U.S. House elections that would greatly redraft present boundaries, resulting in the displacement of some 360,000 voters from one district to the other, or nearly one-fourth of the state's population.

The Republican plan would draw incumbent Democrat Chellie Pingree, who lives in North Haven and whose base is Knox County, out of the First District and into the Second. Such a move would leave Pingree with two objectionable choices: either engage her Democratic colleague, the Second's Mike Michaud, in a Democratic Primary or stay in the First (tradition, not law, stipulates that a U.S. House representative should live in the district in which she runs), but renounce her established network of Knox County voters. Moreover, State Senator Kevin Raye, the Republican President of the Maine Senate who is expected to challenge Michaud next year, would benefit considerably from a redrawn, more conservative Second District.

Some Democrats have argued that the GOP, in attempting to convert two Democratic seats into a safe-Democratic First District and a lean-Republican Second District, has designs on the state's Electoral College vote in presidential elections. Unlike most states, Maine does not employ a statewide winner-take-all system of electoral vote allocation. Joined by Nebraska, it awards one electoral vote for each congressional district won and two electoral votes for winning the state. If the Second District became more conservative because of a gerrymander, the Republican nominee for president could win potentially one electoral vote.

Democrats have countered the Republican plan with a proposal that would alter the current boundaries only marginally, moving 4,300 voters in the town of Vassalboro from the First District to the Second. The plan would likely result in the following: both seats would retain their Democratic advantage, Pingree would maintain her Knox Country base in the First District, and the electoral votes of both districts would remain squarely in national Democratic hands. The GOP has lambasted the map as a "status quo proposal" intended to protect Democratic officeholders, not to make the state competitive.

While some observers believe that a statue requiring a two-thirds majority of both chambers to pass any new map might encourage compromise between the entrenched parties, there have been rumors that Republicans are considering scrapping the statue for a simple majority rule. Such a development, if truly being considered, would permit the GOP to push through a controversial, partisan plan over Democratic protestations.

FairVote's Super District Alternative

Image: Maine's Current Congressional Districts (left) and the Super District Alternative (right)

Time for an Honest, Proportional, and Fair System: These controversies demonstrate the way in which the current system is inadequate: it fails not only to represent accurately the people of Maine, but reduces voters to mere pawns in a grand political game designed to benefit party elites rather than the people. Even in states unaffected by reapportionment, there is the impulse to engage in gerrymandering and other highly undemocratic maneuvering.

FairVote's solution to these problems, endemic to the current system, is to consolidate both of Maine's single-member districts into one at-large, multi-seat super district employing proportional allocation. If Maine were to become a single super district, the state as a whole would simply elect two representatives, with 664,180 people represented per seat and, at a minimum, 33.34% of the vote (called the threshold of exclusion) necessary for a candidate to win a seat. Importantly, the new proportional, multi-seat system would produce a congressional delegation more reflective of popular opinion, infusing every voice with significance and empowering previously discouraged voters.

Although FairVote prefers super districts with at least three seats, in order to allow for a greater balance of representation, ending single-member congressional districting in Maine still has clear advantages in that it would more fairly reflect the state.

Partisan Analysis of FairVote's Super District Alternative: In a proportional system, a state as closely divided as Maine, with a statewide partisan index of 55.0% Democratic, would be unlikely to produce a congressional delegation uniformly from one party. With winner-take-all, single-member districts eliminated, the Democratic Party would no longer have 'blue barricades' to shield their candidates from the state electorate's substantial contingent of Republican voters, causing their monopoly of Maine's U.S. House seats to collapse.

Voting Rights Analysis of FairVote's Super District Alternative: Because Maine's voting age population remains 95.6% White, voting rights issues of accurate representation for racial minorities do not apply. At present, Blacks comprise only 0.9% of the voting age population and Latinos 1.0%, both being some 32 points beneath the minimum threshold of support to win one seat.

Super Districts

Number of Seats

Population
per Seat

Threshold to Win One Seat

Partisan Index

Projected
Party Split

Districts Creating
Super District

at large

664,180

33.34%

55.0% (D)

1 Dem, 1 Rep
(possibly 1 independent)

1, 2

Taking the Gerrymander out of Maine: To continue their domination of Maine's U.S. House races, Democratic candidates would have to win at least 66.67 percent statewide, an aggregate total 11 points above the partisan index. With their 45.0% partisan index, Republicans would gain new relevance, strongly positioned to win in the Second District. Nevertheless, in a state where independent voters are particularly strong (Maine had an independent governor from 1995 to 2003), neither party could afford to take winning for granted, as independents could pick off a seat in the event of ideological overreach or candidate inadequacy by one or both of the major parties.

While the Republican redistricting proposal might result in a similar projected party split (D-1, R-1), FairVote's multi-seat super district achieves the same ends while employing different and distinctly more democratic means. Neither party would have the power to gerrymander safe single-member districts that distribute their voters were needed and the opposition's voters where convenient. Rather than a GOP proposal neglecting Republican voters in the First and Democratic voters in the Second or a Democratic proposal discounting Republican voters in both districts, FairVote's plan would erect a system under which all of Maine's voters would matter, equally.

In the spirit of Maine's state slogan, this is the way democracy should be.

No More Gerrymanders: Transforming Connecticut into One At-Large Super District

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:12:18 -0700

Highlights

Redistricting, which occurs every ten years, ensures political lines reflect population changes and that each district has approximately the same number of voters per seat.
Connecticut currently has monopoly U.S. House representation, with Democrats holding all five seats even though more than 40% of voters are likely to back Republicans in competitive statewide federal races.
Lawmakers in Connecticut are debating how to redraw the boundaries of the state's five U.S. congressional districts in the wake of the 2010 Census. Both chambers of the state legislature must approve a plan by a two-thirds vote before it becomes law. Fully in control of the state legislature, the Democratic Party is expected to push through a new map that protects its incumbents and monopoly control of the delegation.
The controversies associated with redistricting are products of our winner-take-all elections, in which 50.01% of voters can elect 100% of representation. Winner-take-all rules marginalize like-minded voters of a political minority no matter their relative numerical strength, thereby depressing turnout and providing inadequate representation.
As part of an ongoing project, FairVote has produced a "super district" map designed for election with a proportional voting system. Our proportional plan upholds U.S. Supreme Court rulings on apportionment while guaranteeing fairer representation. Additionally, it would end gerrymandering and result in more nuanced voter choice than possible under the current winner-take-all system.
Proportional voting plans are legal under the U.S. Constitution, but would require Congress to repeal a 1967 law mandating single-member districts.

The Political Context in Connecticut

Connecticut and the 2010 Census: From 2000 to 2010, Connecticut's population grew from 3.41 million to 3.57 million, for an increase of 4.9%. This rate, while significantly below the national average of 9.7%, nevertheless outperformed the Northeast's 3.2%, with only New Hampshire besting the state in the region. Racially, Connecticut is still predominately White (71.2%), although Hispanics (13.4%) and Blacks (9.4%) continue to grow appreciably as a percent share of the state. Connecticut emerged from the reapportionment process having neither lost nor gained any congressional seats.

As is inevitable, the last decade has seen the populations of the five districts fall out equilibrium; the 2010 Census showed the most populous Second District having 729,771 residents and the least populous Fourth with 706,740, a difference of 23,031. Due to Supreme Court rulings that require a state's congressional districts to be equal in population, redistricting is necessary to bring the districts back into balance.

With Democrats in control of redistricting (although because they lack the needed supermajority, Democrats will not be able to ignore Republican input) and holding all five U.S. House seats, congressional redistricting in 2011 is expected to be a more sedate affair than in 2001, when the state, having lost a seat during the 2000 Census reapportionment process, struggled to collapse six districts into five.

State Democrats to Protect National Incumbents: With the redistricting process under the direction of the Democratic-dominated Connecticut General Assembly, the party will be looking to construct safer seats in the historically Republican Fourth and Fifth Districts, presently held by incumbent Democrats Jim Himes and Christopher Murphy, respectively. As such, the state legislature's map will likely buttress Himes and Murphy at the marginal expense of their House colleagues Rosa DeLauro in the Third and John Larson in the First, both of whom should have in 2012 less demanding paths to victory after having been returned to Congress with robust majorities in 2006, 2008 and 2010.

Such a strategically pro-Democratic redistricting plan, combined with the winner-take-all electoral system, would undoubtedly deprive Connecticut Republicans of what they believe to be their two greatest opportunities to make inroads into the state's congressional delegation, thereby making the state's 2012 House elections almost certainly uncompetitive. Put simply, the vote of a Republican in Connecticut, of which there were 460,000 in House racdes during the 2010 midterms, is set to become even more inconsequential.

Intra-Party Quarrels as Lawmakers Jockey for Position: Perhaps the most interesting political game involves the rumored battle over Bridgeport, the Democratic enclave that provided Himes his 11,621 vote margin (he won Bridgeport by 23,624 votes) when he narrowly edged ten-term Republican incumbent Christopher Shays in 2008. In April, the local press reported that Connecticut House Speaker Christopher Donovan, who is pondering a bid in the Fifth District after current incumbent Murphy indicated that he would run for Joseph Lieberman's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat, was looking to buoy his prospects in the GOP-leaning constituency by redrawing the state's most populous city out of the Fourth.

Donovan also serves on the eight-member bipartisan committee the General Assembly has tasked with drafting the new district lines and could potentially seek to make the Fifth District more favorable to his run for office. Donovan denies harboring such plans, but this possible intra-party fight highlights two important points: first, the thoroughly undemocratic, backroom jockeying that commonly accompanies the redistricting process, and second, the way in which gerrymandering is an inherently biased process in which politicians often at least have the potential of pursuing their personal interests.

FairVote's Super District Alternative

Image: Connecticut's Current Congressional Districts (left) and the Super District Alternative (right)

Time for an Honest, Proportional, and Fair System: These controversies demonstrate the way in which the current system is inadequate: it fails not only to represent accurately the people of Connecticut, but reduces voters to mere pawns in a grand political game designed to benefit party elites rather than the people. Even in states unaffected by reapportionment, there is the impulse to engage in gerrymandering and other highly undemocratic maneuvering.

FairVote's solution to these problems, endemic to the current system, is to consolidate all five of Connecticut's single-member districts into one at-large, multi-seat super district employing proportional allocation. If Connecticut were to become a single super district, the state as a whole would simply elect five representatives, with 714,819 people represented per seat and, at a minimum, 16.67% of the vote (called the threshold of exclusion) necessary for a candidate to win a seat. Importantly, the new proportional, multi-seat system would produce a congressional delegation more reflective of popular opinion, infusing every voice with significance and empowering previously discouraged voters.

Partisan Analysis of FairVote's Super District Alternative: In a proportional system, a state that is as divided as Connecticut (with a statewide partisan index of 57.6% Democratic) would be highly unlikely to produce a congressional delegation uniformly from one party. With winner-take-all, single-member districts eliminated, the Democratic Party would no longer have 'blue barricades' to shield their candidates from the state electorate's substantial contingent of Republican voters, causing their monopoly of U.S. House seats to collapse. Democrats would be well-positioned to win three seats and Republicans two seats, although both parties would need to compete with independent candidates in a state with a tradition of strong independent candidacies.

Super District

Number of Seats

Population per Seat

Threshold to Win One Seat

Partisan Index* (D)

Projected Party Split

Districts Used to Create Super District

At large

714,819

16.67%

57.6%

Democrats: 3
GOP: 2
(with independents influential)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Voting Rights Analysis of FairVote's Super District Alternative: The new system's scrapping of the winner-take-all framework would provide racial minorities with increased opportunities for fair representation; instead of having to win a plurality in a single-member district, each group would now need only 16.67% of the vote to win a seat in the super district. Although the African American and Latino voting age populations, at 8.9% and 11.6%, respectively, are below the threshold of exclusion, both groups grew considerably over the last decade (the African share of the population increased 16.9% and the Latino share 49.6%). Thus, voters in each group would be well-positioned to join with other like-minded voters to win seats now and likely would become increasingly competitive as their numbers grow.

Super District

Number of Seats

Population per Seat

Threshold to Win One Seat

White VAP

Black VAP

Latino VAP

At large

714,819

16.67%

74.2%

8.9%

11.6%

Taking the Gerrymander out of Connecticut: To continue their domination of Connecticut's U.S. House races, Democratic candidates would have to win more than 83 percent of the statewide vote. With their 42.4% partisan index, Republicans would gain new relevance, strongly positioned to win two seats.

Existing Single-Member Districts

Projected 2011 Proposal

FairVote Super District

Partisan Split Projection

5 Democrats
0 Republicans

5 Democrats
0 Repupblicans

3 Democrats
2 Republicans
(independents would challenge for a seat)

Race and Representation

5 white
0 black
0 Latino

5 white voters' preference

0 black and Latino voters' strong preference

4 white voters' preference

1 minoriy voter influence

(increased opportunities for strong racial minority candidates)

Under FairVote's plan, neither party would have the power to gerrymander safe single-member districts that distribute their supporters where needed and their opposition's voters where convenient. Rather than having one-party dominate its U.S. House seats, Connecticut's congressional delegation would become more reflective of popular opinion. With the winner-take-all, single-member district format scrapped, all of Connecticut's voters would matter, equally. This is the way democracy should be.