On May 5, the entire Eighth Circuit reversed an earlier decision of a 3-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit, and ruled that Martin, South Dakota, need not use cumulative voting for its city council elections. Here is the decision, which is Cottier v City of Martin, 07-1628.
Cumulative voting systems typically give voters three votes, in an election at which three candidates are to be elected. A voter is free to distribute his or her votes in any way. In other words, a voter can give one vote to each of three candidates; or a voter can give 1.5 votes to each of two candidates, or a voter can give all 3 votes to one candidate. The case arose because Native Americans in Martin have not been able to win seats on the city council under the city’s at-large system. Native Americans had sued, charging that the city’s at-large system violates the federal Voting Rights Act. They had won the case, but the city had asked the full circuit to overturn the decision, and now the city has won by a vote of 7-4. Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.
A better option might be to have several district seats plus 1 or 2 at large.
The plaintiffs and the city agree that dividing the city into districts wouldn’t help, because the Native Americans are scattered around, and not concentrated in any one neighborhood.
Richard:
Would the use of cumulative voting force a voter to use all 3 votes on no more than 3 candidates? Maybe a person in a large (10 or more) candidate field prefers 4 or 5 candidates from a candidate block. Admittedly, voting for more than 3 would reduce the vote’s value each candidate would earn in the balloting. Still, some voters might be willing to take the chance rather than leaving out someone that they were comfortable with should they win the election.
The 8th circuit’s opinion was not about cumulative voting as a remedy (“cumulative voting” is mentioned once, only in passing), but about other facets of the case involving liability.
P.R. and A.V. — regardless of all MORON lawyers and judges.
The city had redistricted into 3 wards (there are only 1100 people) and was then sued under VRA Section 2.
The district court found that only 2 of 3 Gingles conditions were met: (1) that the minority was geographically compact enough that it could constitute a majority in a single-member district; and (2) that the minority voted cohesively as a bloc.
But the district court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to show that (3) the majority voted cohesively as a bloc to prevent election of the minority-preferred candidates.
A 3-judge panel of the appeals court overruled the district court on the 3rd condition, and the full court did not rehear the case.
On remand, the district court ordered cumulative voting, even though it had earlier found that there was a way to draw a minority majority district that did not appear to be too horrible nor deliberately segregated voters.
Martin only has about 50 city blocks of residential areas, so I suspect that the plans were not so wonderful. In small towns, economic residential segregation may not be so harsh as in metropolitan areas. As noted in the minority appeals court opinion, the model plans presented by the plaintiffs only created districts that were barely over 50% minority. So it may have not been a case of picking “areas” that were 60% minority over “areas” that is 40% minority. But in a small town, this might mean taking a block where 6 of the 10 houses had minority occupants, vs. 4 of 10. And such variation on a small scale may have a high random element.
A 3-member panel affirmed the district court’s order of cumulative voting.
The full court then reconsidered, and decided not only to limit their decision to the proposed remedy, but also the finding of discrimination by the 3-judge panel.
The 7-4 majority found that the original trial judge had ruled correctly in finding that there was not a VRA violation, so the remedy was moot. The minority opinion was that the full court should not have reconsidered the first decision by the 3-judge panel after declining to do so in the first place several years ago. But they would have sent the case back to the district court to reconsider the decision to impose comulative voting in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in NC.
Total Votes / Total Seats = P.R. = indirect REAL Democracy.
All else is JUNK — cumulative voting, etc.