CUMULATIVE VOTING: AN EFFECTIVE ELECTORAL DEVICE FOR FAIR AND MINORITY REPRESENTATION

A century ago, cumulative voting was a “hot” issue of electoral reform at the national, state, and local levels in the United States. It soon became a historical curiosity unique to Illinois among the American states as the method for electing members of its lower legislative assembly, except for its continuing use for selecting members of the boards of directors of private corporations in several states. But today there is a rebirth of interest in cumulative voting, since elections by pluralities and the failure of large groups in many communities to obtain reasonable representation are still legitimate concerns for underrepresented minorities, other interested citizens, elected policymakers at all levels, and political scientists. The concept of cumulative voting was first advanced by James Garth Marshall, an Englishman, in his book Mujorities and Minorities: Their Relative Rights, published in 1854. His proposal attracted early attention on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. England adopted cumulative voting for the election of local school board members in 1870 (see Moore’). Mr. Buckalew of Pennsylvania proposed in the United States Senate in 1867 and again in 1869* that cumulative voting be utilized for electing members of the United States House of Representatives. The subject was debated in Congress in both 1870 and again in 1871,3 but the plan was not acted upon favorably, and it received no legal recognition. Cumulative voting was adopted in Illinois in 1870 for the election of members of its house of representatives; it has been used continuously since 1872, except for the election of 1964, when all candidates were elected in a statewide “at-large’’ election. This electoral device was applied to municipal elections in Pennsylvania in 1871 and in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1872. In an attempt to break the political power of Tammany, cumulative voting was provided for in a new charter for New York City in 1872, but Democratic Governor John Thompson Hoffman interposed with a gubernatorial veto (see Moore’). Cumulative voting was one of three principal representative reforms advocated in the midnineteenth century. The other two were proportional representation and limited voting. Proportional representation, as the term implies, is a means for translating actual votes into proportionate representative strength in a legislative body. Under limited voting, each voter has fewer votes to cast than the number of representatives to be chosen. For example, if three representatives are to be elected, each voter might have two votes, as is the case for the election of county commissioners in Pennsylvania. Thus, voters of the majority party are prevented from electing every representative, and some minority representation is assured. The electoral device of cumulative voting has three significant characteristics. First, it retains the district system of representation, but three representatives rather than one are elected from each district. It would be possible to elect more than three from each district under this plan. For instance, in Manchester, England, 1 5 members of the local school board were to be elected in 1870, and each voter had 15 votes to cast for candidates of his choice. But three is the most common number;