Section 8:
Background Reading
For Electoral Systems
Assignment
The Single-Member-District Plurality (SMDP) system
Since this is a mouthful you may also call it the
"winner-take-all" system. Another figurative way of understanding
this system is to call it the "first horse across the finish line"
system.
The Single Member District (SMD), or "winner-take-all," system is
the electoral system used in the United States,
Canada, and Great Britain.
Under this system the nation (or state or province) is divided into electoral
districts containing approximately equal numbers of residents and voters. The United States
has 435 Congressional House districts each having approximately 575,000
persons. In each district each political party will back one candidate against
the candidates of rival parties. Whichever candidate secures the largest number
of votes wins the seat representing that district in the national (or state or
provincial) legislature.
To illustrate how this system works consider the following example: The city
of Laputa
is divided into four districts of equal population and each district is allowed
to elect one representative to sit on the four member
City Council. Three different political parties have each backed its own
candidate in each district and the percentages of the votes won by each party's
candidate in each district were as follows:
PERCENTAGE OF DISTRICT
VOTE WON BY CANDIDATE OF
Pretentious Milquetoasts Redneck
Plutocrat Moderate Revival
Party Movement Rally
(PPP) (MMM) (RRR)
District 1 90 8 2
District 2 51 29 20
District 3 40 21 39
District 4 19 42 39
District by district, whichever candidate wins the largest chunk of votes
gets the seat for that district. This "largest chunk" need not be an
outright majority - most SMDP systems only require a "plurality." In
District 1 the Pretentious Plutocrats have received 90% of the votes while in
District 2 they received 51% of the votes. Therefore they clearly have the
seats for Districts 1 and 2. In District 3 they won the largest percentage of
the votes, 40%, which is a plurality giving them the seat for District 3. In
District 4, however, the largest clump went to the Milquetoast Moderates.
Note the effect this system has on the Redneck Revival Party: although they
won at least a third of the votes in Districts 3 and 4 and at least a fifth of
the votes in District 2 they received no seats at all. In effect the SMDP
system tends to favor the two largest parties while making it virtually
impossible for third party, or independent, candidates to win seats at all. The
effect this has on most rational voters, who understand how the electoral rules
promotes an implicit "two party system," is to discourage them from
casting their ballots away on candidates and parties that have little chance of
winning.
One other matter can make it more difficult or more easy
to run as an independent or third-party candidate in this system, namely the
size and homogeneity of the districts. If the supporters of the Redneck Revival
Rally live concentrated in certain areas of Laputa
then the effect of having Laputa subdivided into
several more districts of smaller yet equal numbers of voters might allow them
to form the majority, or even plurality of voters in some of these new, smaller
districts in which case they might win a few seats. The larger the districts
are and the more diluted the voting strength of a minor party is in that
district then the less chance there will be of a third party candidate or
independent winning an election.
Proportional Representation System
"Proportional representation" (PR) means that the numbers of seats
in a legislature or electoral body are awarded to a party or to its candidates
only in direct proportion to that party's or candidate's percentage of votes in
the elections. Since this system is believed by some to allow a more accurate
representation of the diversity of political opinions within a nation it has
been adopted by several nations, such as Italy
and Israel.
The Democratic Party of the United
States has adopted internal party rules that
require proportional representation of women and members of minority groups in
its party caucuses and national nominating conventions. Many nations have
adopted electoral systems which incorporate aspects both of the SMDP system as
well as of PR.
Returning to our example of the city of Laputa if we take
the same election results but award seats according to Proportional
Representation we achieve a different result. By summing the percentages of
votes won by each party across all districts and dividing these figures by the
number of districts (expressed also as a percentage figure, that is, 4
Districts equals 400 percent) you can determine what proportion of seats goes
to which party. The solution is worked out below:
Pretentious Milquetoasts Redneck
Plutocrat Moderate Revival
Party Movement Rally
(PPP) (MMM) (RRR)
District 1 90 8 2
District 2 51 29 20
District 3 40 21 39
District 4 19 42 39
------- ------- -------
200 100 100
Proportion = 200/400 100/400 100/400
of Total Votes = 50% 25% 25%
As 50 percent of four seats is two seats and 25 percent of four seats is one
seat the Pretentious Plutocrats receive only two seats, while the Milquetoast
Moderates still receive only one. However the Redneck Revival Rally will win at
least one seat under this system.
The PR system has some strange quirks. In the examples above the figures
were rigged to work out to whole, round numbers. In reality this almost never
happens. If a party won 24.5 percent of the nation-wide vote it may become an
acrimonious center of contention whether that party would receive 25 seats or
just 24 seats in a national legislature having 100 members. Typically PR
systems have impose minimum percentage cut-off figures that require a party to
win at least 5 percent of the nation-wide vote before it could claim any seats
at all. In cases were the percentage result creates a toss-up result between
two parties there may be run-off elections held in districts were the two
contending parties have won near equal pluralities. The strangest feature of
the PR system, however, is the use of "party lists." Each party will
list its members in descending order from their leadership status. The party
leader, who would become Prime Minister if his party won a majority, would be
first and the prospective members of his cabinet then numbered according to
their relative pecking order within the party. Next the other parliamentary
candidates of the party would be listed with incumbents listed first in order
of their tenure of office or party seniority and then challengers listed in
order of their seniority. In a nation-state with a 100 seat parliament Party X
might run candidates in every district but if it won 60 percent of the vote
then only the first 60 names on the party list would receive seats in the
parliament. Occasionally this produces strange results; e.g. Imagine an
election in which a candidate with list number 58 of the winning party achieved
a bare plurality of 40 percent against 30 each for contenders of the two rival
parties while a candidate with list number 65 of the same winning party had won
90 percent of the vote in his own district. In spite of the fact that candidate
number 65 had contributed more to achieving the majority figure of 60 percent
than did candidate number 58, candidate number 58 would probably receive a seat
while candidate number 65 would not be seated.
Since independent and minor parties have a better chance of winning under
this system they are more encouraged to run candidates in many districts under
this system than under the SMDP system while voters who prefer the independent
or the minor parties will be more encouraged to cast their votes for such
candidates. However the negative side of this is that in a parliamentary system
this might leave the elected body without a clear-cut majority in the hands of
one party.
Reapportionment: Redistricting Congressional (House) Districts
By a 1911 Statute the number of seats in the House of Representatives is
fixed at 435 seats. Each seat should represent (approximately) equal numbers of
voters. Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires a census every
decade so that each state will only have the numbers of House Representatives
that it should have on the basis of its population.
The Bureau of the Census counts the total number of persons in the United States
as a whole and also the total numbers in each state, county, city, even down to
the block level. If some states have gained population relative to the growth
of the population of the nation as a whole then some of these states may
receive extra seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. If a state has lost
population relative to the rest of the nation (that is, it either has actually
decreased in population or less has simply not grown at the same rate as the
rest of the nation) that it may lose a seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives. Since the total number of seats is limited to 435 that means
if some states gain seats then other states must lose seats so that the total
number of seats remains the same. Since the southern and western states have
been growing in population at a much greater rate than the northeastern and
upper Midwest states that means that political power has increasingly shifted
from the traditional centers of power around New York City, Boston,
Philadelphia and Chicago to southern states and cities such as Atlanta, Miami,
Los Angeles, and Houston.
However if a state does not gain or lose population relative to the rest of
the nation (in other words, if its population grew at the same rate as the rest
of the nation) the populations of the Congressional districts, counties and
cities within the state might nonetheless grow or decline with respect to
each other. Therefore the lines of the Congressional Districts might still
need to be redrawn to keep the numbers of persons being represented in each
district the same.
To make this more concrete assume that a certain State X with three members
in the U.S. House of Representatives was found to have a population of
2,300,000 following the conclusion of the last U.S. Census in 1992. The same
Census found the population of the entire United States to be approximately
250 million. That would mean that each district should have the following
numbers of people being represented by each member of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
250,000,000/435 = 574,713 or approximately 575,000 people per seat
If we then divide the population of State X by this figure we would get the
number of seats that the State was entitled to in the U.S. House of Representatives:
2,300,000/575,000 = 4 seats
Once the U.S. Bureau of the Census published its 1992 findings it would be
up to the State Legislature of State X to redistrict the State into four
Congressional districts. The main legal limitations on the Legislature are 1)
that it must seek to create districts of approximately equal population and 2)
that each district should be contained within one set of boundaries (i.e. one
district should not form several "islands" in the midst of other
districts). This is where the Census data on counties and cities is useful in
helping the Legislature in its task of redrawing lines in order to create new
districts of near equal populations. The existing statutory and case law does
not prohibit the Legislature from redrawing the districts in order to favor
those interests that dominate the legislature or else from benefitting
the political party in control of the Legislature. In many states in which
agriculture had been the main livelihood the State legislatures were dominated
by farmers who wanted the redistricting always to favor agricultural areas over
urban areas, even when the metropolitan areas around an urban center would have
enough population to form a separate congressional district. Let's now return to
the Legislature of State X and see what it does in trying to create four new
districts:
State X Before Redistricting State X After Redistricting
|---------------/--------| |------------|------------|
| A A /A A | | A A | A A |
| / | | | |
| A A U / U A A| | A A U | U A A |
| |----\ | | |---|--------|
| U/ U* U \ | | U /U*/U |
| / \ | |-----------/ / |
| A A/U U A \ A | | A A U /U A A |
| | \--| | | |
| A A| A A | | A A | A A |
|---------|--------------| |-------------|-----------|
Each U = 100,000 "Upstarts," people living in the main urban area
Each A = 100,000 "Aggies," people living in an agricultural area
Although the City of Upstart (U*), which is the State Capital of X has a
metropolitan population of around 700,000, the members of the State Legislature
largely represent the 1,600,000 people of State X who are farmers. Since these
constituents are anxious that the redistricting not prejudice their interests
note that the Redistricting has concentrated the numbers of farmers in each
district so that they form a majority whereas the regions of Upstart and its
suburbs, which could easily form a entire new district, have been subdivided in
such a way that the city-dwellers form only a minority in each of the new
districts. This is what has been done in Idaho:
Ada County, in which Boise
with its 250,000 citizens is located, has been "split" between Idaho's First and Second Congressional Districts so that
the urban interests of Boise
will not overshadow the agricultural interests in either district.
This approach to redistricting is summarized as "Pack 'em and Crack 'em"
that is, pack as many people of your own interest or party
into each district so that they form a majority there and crack,
or subdivide, concentrations of a different interest group or political party
so that they will not form a majority anywhere. This approach to redistricting
is also referred to as "gerry-mandering."
Homework Assignment
on the Electoral System, Due October 10, 2008.