As the Cambridge municipal elections approach, it’s important to consider not only the candidates who are being elected, but also how they are being elected. The city of Cambridge operates under a proportional representation system, ensuring that the makeup of the council reflects the political range of its constituency. It secures “minority representation with majority control,” protecting the constituency from tyranny of the majority. While this electoral method is currently commonplace in cities across the US, it was first implemented only about 100 years ago, during the Progressive wave that swept the nation in the early 1900s.
The Progressive Movement saw proportional representation as a solution to the extensive corruption that often dominated local government. Most notably, Tammany Hall of New York City was overtaken by “party machines” led by “bosses” who took part in bribery and fraud to consolidate their power. These machines took advantage of winner-take-all elections and often swept almost all council seats based on only 50 to 60 percent of the vote, allowing for tyranny of the (bare) majority. Election systems based on proportional representation broke up these large blocks of power and allowed for greater representation of the electorate. This model has since been adopted by cities across the United States and is currently the system being used in the upcoming Cambridge elections.
While Cambridge and other U.S. cities have maintained this model, proportional representation only ever seems to go as far as the local level. The electoral college is one of the most visible and contested winner-take-all systems, but all U.S. House elections are also based on single-member districts, as mandated by a 1967 federal law. However, state-by-state progress is slowly beginning to change the electoral landscape, as a few states have already begun adopting these systems in order to bolster minority representation. Maine and Nebraska currently allocate their presidential Electoral College votes proportionally. Additionally, The Center for Voting and Democracy, based in Washington, D.C., has created potential plans for North Carolina and Georgia that could lead to the adoption multi-member proportionally representative districts for House elections.
While this nation’s governing bodies are slowly becoming more and more representative of their constituencies, there is still much progress to be made. Maybe the nation has something to learn from our small city.
Image Credit: Google Images / United States Army