Leslie Graves and Geoff Pallay, researchers at Ballotpedia, have published this report on the lack of voter choices on the ballot for state legislative races. The report says 32.7% of legislative districts have no contest between the two major parties this year.
Ballot Access News published a somewhat similar study in the October 1, 2010 print issue, and found 36.1% of the races lack a contest between a Democrat and Republican. The difference between the two studies is because of different treatment of multi-member districts. The Ballotpedia study considered a district to have a Democratic-Republican contest if it elects, for example, 5 members, and there are 5 Democrats and 1 Republican running. But the Ballot Access News study considered an example like that to lack Democratic-Republican competition for 4 seats.
Where in the US are there multi-member districts? How does that work?
In some states, some districts are multi-member whereas others are single-member. States like this are Indiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Vermont, and West Virginia.
In certain other states, each district for the lower house elects two. States like that are Arizona, Idaho, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington.
Minnesota has all single-member districts but looking at the election returns it would be easy to assume that it doesn’t. Each legislative district elects one Senator and two Representatives, but each legislative district is cut into two equal-population halves for State House, and each half elects one representative.
In the post-World War II past many more states had multi-member districts, including Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, and probably a few others.
MMD = one more gerrymander scheme by the party hacks to wipe out the opposition — on a larger scale than in SMD.
How soon before the SMD/MMD party hack extremist incumbents cause Civil WAR II to happen ???
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P.R. NOW in ALL legislative body elections = 100 percent competition in ALL areas.
Texas had multi-member House districts, and there is no provision in the Texas constitution for single member house districts, except when they are a multi-country district. Generally, the constitution provides for apportionment of representatives to counties with population sufficient for more than one, and formation of smaller counties into districts with a population equivalent to one representative. Federal courts generally frown on the use multi-member districts in VRA cases. When a district threw out the multi-member districts in Texas, the legislature simply ignored county lines to a large extent. The Texas Supreme Court however has ruled that the Texas Constitution is to be followed to the extent possible, so now districts are apportioned to counties, and then districts are drawn within counties.
The Washington constitution does not require representatives to be elected from legislative districts at large, and has had a few representative sub-districts, especially in more rural areas where a dominant area might elect both representatives and the senator.
I believe Vermont permits towns to determine whether their representatives at large, or by district.
Illinois elects representatives from districts nested in senate districts. The senate districts in the Chicago area are often elongated sausage shapes to maintain districts as population has moved to the suburbs. Typically, these sausages are cut lengthwise, so that both representative districts are similar demographically and politically. At one time, Illinois elected representatives from 3-member districts using cumulative voting. Pat Quinn’s claim to fame, other than being lucky enough to be Rod Blagojevich’s Lieutenant Governor, was to get rid of that system.
Thank you for the research. Instead of despair, third parties should see it as an opportunity to become THE opposition for the Democratic-Republican Party in their local area.