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Cumulative Voting: Patterns of Party Allegiance and Rational Choice in Illinois State Legislative Contests

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

George S. Blair
George S. Blair
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Cumulative voting is a rough method of proportional representation perhaps more familiar to more Americans as a device for choosing corporate boards of directors, such as Montgomery Ward's, than as a means of choosing legislative representatives. Among American state electoral systems it is unique to Illinois, where it has been in operation since 1870. Like the one-house legislature in Nebraska, it has been admired there but not copied elsewhere. As used in Illinois it retains the district system of representation, but each district is the unit for choosing three representatives, and each voter is allowed three votes. Thus, in contrast with a single-member district system, it aims to secure representation for a substantial minority without jeopardizing the principle of majority rule; and it has done so. If this were all, the Illinois example might remain as a museum piece to be observed by students of comparative electoral methods, or by constitution drafters considering a change in systems.

As it happens, however, Illinois superimposed on this cumulative voting scheme for the lower house a conventional single-member district system for the choice of state senators, and providentially for students of voting behavior, from 1870 through the election of 1954 it used the same district boundaries for both purposes.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1958 , pp. 123 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 These can be cast in any of four ways: (1) all three votes to a single candidate; (2) equally divided between two candidates with each receiving a vote and a half; (3) equally divided among three candidates, one vote to each; and (4) two votes to one candidate and one vote to another. This last division of votes was upheld by a majority decision of the Illinois Supreme Court in Allen v. Fuller, 322 Ill. 304 (1929).

2 A legislative reapportionment act approved in 1955, H.B. No. 1123, ended this districting pattern by creating separate senatorial and representative districts for the 1956 elections and thereafter.

3 See Lazarsfeld, Paul F., Berelson, Bernard, and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York, 1948)Google Scholar; Campbell, Angus, Gurin, Gerald, and Miller, Warren E., The Voter Decides (White Plains, N. Y., 1954)Google Scholar; and Ralph, and Fletcher, Mildred, “Consistency in Party Voting from 1896 to 1932,” Social Forces, Vol. 15, 1936Google Scholar.

4 An important exception is Key, V. O. Jr.,, American State Politics: An Introduction (New York, 1956)Google Scholar, esp. Chap. VI. The analysis of party allegiance in this study is limited to primary elections, but it is the most challenging study of state legislative election patterns and trends to date.

5 Two of the three elections in which Republican candidates for treasurer carried Cook County came in years when the office of governor was not at stake.

6 Illinois Laws, 1910, Special Session, 46–82.

7 While Table I reveals that voters in eight districts consistently returned two representatives of the same party with the senatorial seat shifting between the two parties, none of these eight districts are among those which have nominated only three candidates for the three assembly seats.

8 For illustration, assume a district of 60,000 voters. If the minority party has a strength of 15,001, it can cast a sufficiently high vote to elect one of the three representatives regardless of how the majority party vote is divided among three or more candidates.

9 In these districts the Republicans gave one of their three candidates a larger vote than was necessary for his election, thus resulting in smaller vote totals for their other two candidates. Democratic voters, on the other hand, divided their votes almost equally between their two candidates, making them the second and third highest vote getters of the five candidates.

10 These occasions were the 47th district in 1946, 47th district in 1942, 28th district in 1940, and the 10th district in 1936.

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