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

George S. Blair

American Political Science Review, 1958, vol. 52, issue 1, 123-130

Abstract: 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.

Date: 1958
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