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Tom Monto

Illinois's Cumulative Voting 1870 to 1980

Cumulative Voting is not PR and it is not STV

BUT it does produce some semblance of minority representation that is not produced under FPTP.


Here is how Wikipedia describes it:

From 1870 to 1980, Illinois's lower house had several unique features:

  • The House comprised 177 members. The state was divided into 59 legislative districts, each of which elected one senator and three representatives.

[so used same district for Senator and for State Representatives -- that is a nice feature - one less arbitrary district for voters to try to conform to]

  • Elections for the state house were conducted using Cumulative Voting; each individual voter was given three votes to cast for House seats, and they could distribute them to three candidates (one vote each), one candidate (receiving three votes—this was called a bullet vote) or two candidates (each receiving 1½ votes).

  • Though not constitutionally mandated, the two parties had an informal agreement that they would only run two candidates per district. Thus, in most districts, only four candidates were running for three seats. This not only all but guaranteed that the district's minority party would win a seat (particularly outside Chicago), but usually assured that each party would have significant representation—a minimum of one-third of the seats (59 out of 177)—in the House.

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