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from the AP:
This undated file photo provided by the Port Chester, N.Y., village clerk shows the ballot for the election of six village trustees in Port Chester, N.Y.
In Port Chester, trustees had been elected two at a time every two years, with conventional at-large voting. Most voters were white, and there were always six white trustees even though Hispanics made up half the population and nearly a quarter of the voters. Judge Stephen Robinson concluded the system violated U.S. law by diluting Hispanics’ votes.
The standard remedy was to break a municipality into districts, with one district including many from the minority, thereby increasing the chances for a candidate backed by the minority group. The Justice Department proposed that solution for Port Chester.
But the village of about 30,000 objected to districts. It suggested instead a system called cumulative voting. All six trustees would be elected at once and the voters could apportion their six votes as they wished — all six to one candidate, one each to six candidates or any combination.
The system, which has been used in Alabama, Illinois, South Dakota and Texas, allows a political minority to gain representation if it organizes behind specific candidates. Judge Robinson went for it, and cumulative voting was used for the first time in a New York municipality.
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The Green Party supports a change to more proportional systems of voting including cumulative voting.
Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, Ballot issues, election, Election 2010, elections, grassroots democracy
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