West Virginia Legislature Passes Bill Eliminating Multi-Winner Legislative Districts

On March 10, the West Virginia legislature passed HB 4002, which eliminates multi-member legislative districts.


Comments

West Virginia Legislature Passes Bill Eliminating Multi-Winner Legislative Districts — 7 Comments

  1. 1/2 or less votes x 1/2 rigged districts = 1/4 or less CONTROL

    — since 1964 SCOTUS gerrymander cases.

    IE – still wipe out 49.99 pct minorities — change from MMD to SMD.

    PR and AppV

  2. The legislation is not binding on future legislatures. The apportionment of delegates to districts and the definition of those districts is in statute. This is just an added section that is aspirational in nature. An interesting amendment to the bill was to wipe out the lengthy preamble claiming all kinds of reasons for passing the bill, and makes a simple single line statement.

    Current practice and the new bill do not follow the Constitution, which provides for apportionment of delegates among counties. But the constitution itself likely violates the US Constitution. At one time huge numbers of delegates were elected at large from more populous counties such as Kanawha. Over time, these have been divided into smaller districts, that somewhat follow county boundaries. There may be some gerrymandering of districts. Splitting an area off is an easy way to pack Republican voters into a single-member district, while Democrats win all delegates from a multi-member district.

    The aspirational language in the original bill might have been concerned with a possible challenge based on the West Virginia constitution.

  3. I have brought the concept of pure proportional representation (PPR) in multiple winner districts, me accessing the ballot for free speech as a candidate for public office, and I can say with certainty that no established political party wants to hear about the unity phenomena of PPR.

    That’s because the nature of plurality elections in single-winner districts (and plurality voting in multiple winner districts) encourages division and conflict.

    We bring a mathematical unity and we unity candidates are viewed as threats, the smack dished out is acceptable under pluralism and so no progress can be made there as I witnessed first hand for more than twenty-three consecutive years.

    2018 is a new beginning, and our team is back at bat.

    If you want to hear about equal treatment for proportionalists then look at our team and engage the game plan.

    To expect pluralists and civic groups built around that division psychology is not a good plan. For victory in elections proportionalists should build around PPR.

    The United Coalition has been using PPR for more than twenty-three consecutive years and PPR works fine.

    http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html

  4. @DR,

    Read the introduced version of HB 4002, and compare to the enacted version.

    The West Virginia constitution is not grossly in violation of equal protection. It does not, like some state constitutions require a delegate be elected from each county. That is what tripped up Alabama in ‘Reynolds v Sims’. After a representative had been apportioned to every Alabama county, there would be too few extra representatives to dole out to larger counties. Instead, it provides for combining smaller counties with neighboring counties with adjacent counties before making an apportionment.

  5. Plurality elections sustain and perpetuate dysfunction so we can see the predictable patterns of acting against the best interests of the whole from pluralists.

    If you want to use advanced elections then demonstrate you abilities to earn our trust under pure proportional representation (PPR) because your work under pluralism will only destroy the trust of others.

    Pluralism and single-winner elections are no good and that’s why the United Coalition has prohibited all plurality elections and single-winner districts on our team since 1995.

    In 1997 Sergie Brin joined our conversation in Usenet and switched his search engine’s name and other things after asking “What is a joogle?” but they went on to destroy our credibility as a typical pluralist divider.

    http://usparliament.org/how-google-got-its-name.php

    The United Coalition has been using PPR for twenty-three consecutive years and PPR works fine.

    http://www.international-parliament.org/ucc.html

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.