On November 3, 2015, Hartford, Connecticut, held a partisan city election. For city council, the city election law says that parties cannot nominate more than six candidates. Voters may only vote for six candidates. But the top nine vote-getters are elected. All seats are at-large.
The Democratic Party ran six nominees; the Working Families Party ran five nominees; the Republican Party ran three.
The six Democrats were elected. For the remaining three seats, three WFP nominees also won, outpolling all three of the Republicans. The three WFP winners were Cynthia Jennings, 2,076 votes; Wildaliz Bermudez, 1,801 votes; and Larry Deutsch, 1,664.
The three Republicans received 1,091; 1,042; and 866.
The 6 Democrats who were elected received between 5460 and 6170 votes.
Does the disparity in the number of votes required for election cause an equal protection violation?
The post doesn’t say what the election was for. City council?
Are these at-large seats?
If so, isn’t it subject to constitutional challenges that outlawed the at-large districts in Southern cities and counties that made sure black candidates weren’t elected in neighborhood districts.
This seems similar to the old New York City councilman-at-large seats for the five boroughs. Each party could nominate one candidate, but two were elected. In 1973, when Mayor Lindsay won reelection on the Liberal line, he swept in three Liberal city council members in three boroughs who got more votes than the Republican candidates, but mostly it was to ensure minority-party (Republican) representation.
The scheme was found to be a violation of “one person, one vote” in 1983 by the federal courts. Isn’t this Hartford scheme, if it is at-large for a legislative body, also unconstitutional? (Jim Riley mentioned violation of equal protection, which of course is the constitutional provision behind “one person, one vote.”)
Limited voting, as used in Hartford, has been upheld many times around the nation in court.
As to racial and ethnic minorities, the at-large systems are only vulnerable to legal challenge if the record shows that they never, or almost never, win seats. That is not the case in Hartford.
Hi Richard, do you know if the WFP elected anyone else in 2015 who wasn’t also affiliated with the Democrats? (I remember a state senator in Bridgeport, CT, but I am more thinking of local elections without cross-endorsing.)
You’re right, the WFP elected a state legislator in Connecticut in a special election in February 2015. I don’t think the party had any other partisan wins (for nominees who weren’t also major party nominees) in 2015.
The NYC borough-wide elections violated OMOV because each borough received 2 members, in addition to the district members which were based on equal population districts.
So for example, (we’ll assume that Brooklyn has 5 times the population of Staten Island) if Staten Island had 4 district members and 2 borough members, while Brooklyn had 20 district members and 2 borough members, Brooklyn would only have 3.67 times as many representatives as Staten Island, despite having five times the population.
Had the borough members come out of the apportionment for a borough, it might have been legal. For example, let’s increase the numbers to 5 and 25. If Staten Island had 3 district members and 2 borough members, and Brooklyn had 23 district members and 2 borough members, it could possibly been upheld, even though the Staten Island districts would have been larger.
Before the SCOTUS finally ruled that a specific at-large system discriminated against a minority group, their opinion suggested that it could apply to political minorities. The opinions practically begged for someone to bring a specific challenge.
If a particular portion of a city is politically cohesive, yet denied representation of their choice under an at-large system, then they are denied representation on the basis of where they live and their political viewpoint.
Why would courts throughout the country have ruled on Hartford elections?
What you probably mean is that limited voting, though not necessarily the form used in Hartford, has been upheld throughout the country.
If for example, each voter in Hartford was limited to voting for three members, then the results might have been different.