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U.S. uses multi-member districts -- and did in the past as well. It should get more of them again -- and fair voting

  • Tom Monto
  • Nov 6, 2022
  • 10 min read

Updated: Apr 25

Multi-member districts in the U.S.A.

Currently today, ten U.S. states have at least one legislative chamber that includes members elected in multi-member districts.


The reason why national House elections stopped using MMDs is explained in a footnote below.


There are two types of MMDs used in the U.S.:

-those that cover the entire jurisdiction (at-large such as city-wide district used in a city election, where there are no wards), and

- those that do not cover the whole electorate, either two or more MM districts cover the whole jurisdiction, or MM districts are used in conjunction with single-member districts.


(There are also two types of single-member districts - some that cover a whole city or state (electing just one member) and those that cover just a part of a city or state (electing just one).)


At-large districts are used for the U.S. House of Representatives in states that are allotted one representative.

The majority of states use single-member districts at both the federal and state levels, but Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota and Washington use MMDs to elect all state House members.


Six other states use MMD(s) to elect some of their state legislators. (They are listed below.)


Ten other states allow the use of MMDs by law even when not used.

Five states have no law prohibiting or permitting MMDs.


Of the 7,383 seats in the 50 state legislatures, about 14 percent (1015) are elected from districts with more than one member.


Here is the source document for that info:


See also Ballotpedia "State legislative chambers that use multi-member districts":


Multi-member districts (MMDs) are electoral districts that send two or more members to a legislative chamber. Nine U.S. states have at least one legislative chamber with MMDs.[1][2]

There are two other electoral systems employed in the United States, single member and at large.

At-large districts are used for the U.S. House of Representatives in states that are allotted one representative. [At-large usually means multi-member district because there are no divisions to break down the contest into single-member contests, but when only one is being elected, then at-large becomes a single-member district.]

The majority of states use single-member districts at both the federal and state levels.


Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Washington use MMDs to elect all state house members; 10 other states allow the use of MMDs by law even when not used; and five states have no law prohibiting or permitting MMDs.[3]


Of the 7,386 seats in the 50 state legislatures, 876 are elected from districts with more than one member, a total of 11.9%.


MMDs in elections of members of the U.S. House of Representatives


Such greater than one-member district magnitude was used to give more populous counties or established Congressional Districts fair representation without redistricting (specifically, dividing them). It was rare before 1805 but notably applied to many Congressional Districts of New York and Pennsylvania until federally (nationally) prohibited by the 1842 Apportionment Bill and consequent locally implementing legislation.

So MMDs were abolished in 1842 for federal elections.


Some states indeed used quite large DM to elect their members of House of Representatives (13 in  MA 1793-1795 for example)

but where large DM was used, it seems "general ticket" system was used so no possibility of minority representation. 


(Note: MA had four districts with 2 or 3 members each plus one at-large member, but it is reported that "general ticket" system at-large was used to fill the seats [so not clear whether votes in district alone filled district seats].


New York used MMDs

From 1813 to 1823, two seats were apportioned to the 15th district, elected at-large on a general ticket.

likely the other MMDs used same "general ticket" method.


=================================

State level MMDs

As of 1998, 13 states still had multi-member districts in at least one of their legislative bodies.


`                               Largest DM used in lower house

                                1980s    1990s

West Virgina             12                7

New Hampshire*     10                36

Idaho                          6                  2

Georgia                      5                  1


* 2024: The House of Representatives consists of 400 members coming from 203 legislative districts across the state, created from divisions of the state's counties.

[But because in many of these districts, even if they have multiple members, the seats are filled by ticket voting, there is still no balanced representation]

...

Districts vary in number of seats based on their populations, with the least-populous districts electing only one member and the most populous electing 10.


Voters are allowed to cast as many votes as there are seats to be filled. for instance, in a two-member district, a voter can vote for up to two candidates. This system of block voting often results in one party winning all of the seats in the district.


Some municipalities are in multiple districts, including floterial districts, so as to achieve more equal apportionment by population


2022-2024  

Hillsborough district 2 has seven members (it covers city of Bedford)

Hillsborough district 12 has eight members (it covers city of Merrimack)

Rockingham district 13 has ten members (it covers city of Derry)

Rockingham district 25 has nine members (it covers city of Salem)



==================


State elections


As of 2021, ten U.S. states have at least one legislative chamber that uses multi-winner at-large districts (or potentially could use MMDs)


those that elect all members through MMDs


States that use MMDs to elect some of their state legislators:

New Hampshire  

(as of 2012) 105 SMDs, 99 MMDS max DM 11 (Max now is 10) (see below)

Maryland (as of 2012) 24 SMDs, 43 MMDS max DM 3

South Dakota House of Representatives (for all representatives in all sessions) 33 2-seat districts; four SMDs

Vermont House of Representatives 104 SMDs, 46 MMDS DM of 1-2, for Senate 1-3 (as of 2012)


West Virginia used to use MMDs but not any more

(MMDs allowed by law even when not used;

will switch to all-single-winner districts for both chambers in 2022)


also see Ballotpedia multi-member districts

=========================


====================================


New York [city or state?]

circa 1890s


In New York, Limited Voting had been used where voters cast seven votes to elect 12 members.

But both systems had been dropped by 1898.

from Effective Voting (PRCO publication, 1898) (Hathi Trust)


(no further details or dates given.)

=====================


Limited voting has been or is used in Rome, New York; Hartford and other Connecticut cities and towns; in Pennsylvania counties; and in several small towns in Alabama."


p. 22 - Because of the way Limited; Voting; and Cumulative Voting; work, it is much harder to predict the number of potentially wasted votes. An empirical study of the Lim- ited Voting; and Cumulative Voting; elections in Alabama has shown that at least 73% of the voters in Limited; Voting; jurisdictions and at least 61% of the voters in Cumulative Voting; jurisdictions have voted for winning candidates....

...

A sample count in a Preference Voting election is included in the appendix to this article. Preference voting; is used for national elections in Ireland and Australia and for local elections since 1941 in Cambridge (MA), where blacks- roughly 15% of the population - have been represented on council since the 1950s and currently three of seven school board members are black. It was used for New York city council elections in the La Guardia era, Cincinnati from 1925 through 1955, and 21 other American cities, but fell victim to anti-reform forces when people of color and leftists won seats. Kathleen Barber, Proportional Representation and Electoral Reform in Ohio 11 ff (1995).

Preference voting is also used in New York City community school board elections...


(from FEC journal of election administration / Federal Election Commission 1997

Hathi Trust :

==========


Some essays that might discuss MMDs:

Henry Milner, "Prospects for Electoral Reform in Canada," Voting; and Democracy Report 1995, 159 (Washington: Center for Voting; and Democracy, 1995)....


Richard L. Engstrom, Jason R. Kirksey, and Edward Still,

"One Person, Seven Votes: The Cumulative Voting; Experience in Chilton County, Alabama,"

in Affirmative Action and Representation: Shaw v. Reno and the Future of Voting; Rights, (Anthony A. Peacock, ed., 1997);


Leon Weaver, "Semi-Proportional and Proportional Representation Systems in the United States,"

in Choosing an Electoral System: Issues and Alternatives (Arend Lijphart and Bernard Grofman, eds., 1984);


Edward Still, "Cumulative and Limited; Voting; in Alabama,"

in United States Electoral Systems: Their Impact on Minorities and Women (Wilma Rule and Joseph F. Zimmerman eds., 1992).

===============


New Hampshire 

uses MMDs to elect some of its state legislators, with the largest DM being 10.

uses floterial districts that can geographically overlap each other)


Rockingham district no. 13 has ten seats.

Republicans took all ten seats 

with five Democrat not being elected, even though taking about 29 percent of the votes.

no info is given about turnout or total votes cast, but it seems

altogether about 110,000 votes were cast by the approx. 33,000 residents.

perhaps about 14,000 voters voted and on average each cast 7 votes, with no improvement in proportionality of results.

(for proportional rep. better to keep district as it is but have each voter cast just one vote.

likely about 2 or 3 Democrats would be elected, with Republicans taking the bulk of the seats.

for one thing it would mean less counting of votes, only about 14,000 votes, not 110,000!)

for details see

====================================================================



Here's some info on why U.S. dropped MMDs in national elections and why it would be advantageous for the U.S. to bring them back now.



Create multi-member House districts

Americans are accustomed to living in districts represented by one member of Congress. Most state legislative districts send one legislator to their capitols as well. But it hasn’t always been this way. For much of history, multi-member districts were relatively common at both the state and federal levels.


Congress mandated single-member districts in 1967 for the purest of motives. In that era of civil rights reforms, it had become clear that states could use multi-member districts to enforce white supremacy: By creating a few majority-White districts and allowing voters to vote for as many candidates as there were seats in the district, states could effectively shut out minority voices. [Thus poor voting system meant end to MMD when on other hand, a fair voting system where each voter has just one vote in a MMD, would mean fair representation and large multi-member districts.]


But a multi-member district in which, say, three or five representatives were instead chosen through a proportional system could avoid this problem. The reform wouldn’t necessarily favor either party, according to FairVote, with potentially 200 likely Republican seats, 201 likely Democratic seats and 34 swing seats. Few, if any, congressional districts would be represented entirely by one party, according to FairVote’s modeling, because enough supporters of the minority party live in most places to be able to elect at least one member within a multi-member district. Consider that “[i]n 2020, there were more Trump voters in California than any other state and more Biden voters in Texas than in New York or Illinois,” the scholars wrote in their recent open letter to Congress. “The vast — even overwhelming — majority of Americans don’t fit precisely into the ideology of their single-member congressional representation.”


Multi-member districts with proportional voting could yield a Republican elected from currently all-blue Massachusetts and a Democrat from deep-red Oklahoma.


“What that really does is make sure that every district is getting more than one partisan view represented in its delegation,” says Danielle Allen, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University who co-chaired the American Academy’s Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. “When the two caucuses go to their separate rooms, Democrats and Republicans, the whole country geographically would still be there.”


This reform also would finally drive a stake through the heart of gerrymandering, because the multi-member districts would be too large to have their borders be manipulated effectively. {plus what would use of gerrymandering be if each party gets its fair share in each district, no matter how drawn.]


And especially with an enlarged House of Representatives, there could be room for multiple kinds of Democrats or Republicans from the same district — not to mention candidates with other affiliations.


Some reform advocates — like New America’s Drutman, who wrote a book titled “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America” — say the changes would allow for the rise of additional political parties, in part because they wouldn’t be viewed as spoilers in a perpetual Democratic-Republican showdown.


Others foresee the two parties themselves becoming larger, less extreme tents. [Others foresee that the big two parties would splinter into smaller ones.]


Either way, our democracy could recover some of its tolerance and complexity.


“It breaks the binary psychology that every election is this fearsome, zero-sum, all-or-nothing fight for the soul of the country, in which 50.1 percent could somehow create total power,” Drutman told me.


“It basically captures this idea, which I think Madison intuitively grasped in Federalist No. 10, that the way to have legitimate political self-governance is to ensure that coalitions are never fixed. … It means that people are able to make deals with each other in different arrangements.”


[Actually 50.1 percent is not necessary to take total power.

in fact there is no certainty that the victorious party will have to receive more than half the votes in a district or overall.


in 2020 House election

In New York 22 district, Tenney was elected with just 49 percent of the vote.

In Texas 24, Van Duyne was elected with just 49 percent of the vote.


So with these unbalanced results in the separate districts, there is no certainty that the party that takes majority of seats take more than half the votes.


In fact

in 2020, overall Democrats took majority of seats with just 50.8 percent of the vote.

in 2018 overall Democrats took majority of seats with just 53 percent of the vote.

in 2016, overall Republicans took majority of seats with just 49 percent of the vote.


so obviously no guarantee that the victorious party has to take a majority of the votes, more than half the votes, under FPTP when electorate is divided into a multitude of micro-small districts


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History | Tom Monto Montopedia is a blog about the history, present, and future of Edmonton, Alberta. Run by Tom Monto, Edmonton historian. Fruits of my research, not complete enough to be included in a book, and other works.

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