Mark Anderson wrote, "But what I would much rather see in Minneapolis
is cumulative voting (CV) for at-large positions (and make the council seats
all at-large). (Is CV the same as PR?) With CV, minorities in the city could
get a voice in government."
[BRM] Cumulative voting and proportional representation are not the
same thing. Cumulative voting is a system where each voter may cast more than
one vote for the same candidate. Cumulative voting helps a minority elect at
least one representative.
Proportional representation is a somewhat imprecise term because two
related concepts are often (and not incorrectly) interchanged under the rubric
"proportional representation": (1) An electoral system that allocates
legislative seats to each political group in proportion to its voting strength.
(2) A system of transferable preferential voting in a multi-representative
election. Sense 1 involves proportionate outcome, having members of a group
elected in proportion to their numbers in the electorate. Sense 2, more
precisely termed "proportional voting," involves proportionate input, and
describes a system also known as single transferable voting. Proportional
voting, or single transferable voting, is a system where each will migrate or
"transfer" away from a candidate whom it will no longer help. Under
transferable voting, a candidate wins if his or her first-choice votes reach
the number needed to win, or the "threshold." If no candidate reaches the
threshold, the least-preferred candidate is dropped, and his or her votes
transfer to the next-preferred candidate on each ballot. If a candidate reaches
the threshold with an excess, that excess still transfers -- after being
discounted by the non-excess fraction needed to reach the threshold -- among
the surviving candidates. Each transfer preserves each vote as long as at least
one candidate that the voter ranked survives. The redistribution continues
until enough candidates reach the threshold, or the number of surviving
candidates equals the number of representatives still to be elected.
Instant-runoff voting, the system that is commonly proposed for use in
Minneapolis, is a system of preferential voting that mimics a runoff election
using each voter's ranked preferences instead of a second round of voting.
Instant-runoff voting is technically a special case of proportional voting,
where the number of representatives being elected is one and the "threshold" is
a simple majority.
BRM
Brian Melendez
Lowry Hill (Ward 7)
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