Agenda - Charter Commission - 01/08/2002 - Memorandum

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Jnents for a different system, such as a two-election plan or proportional representation, more persua- sive. Under the two-election plan the first is not a primary because any candidate who receives more than half the votes cast for a particular position is declared elected at that time. The plan of having two elections appears to have two merits. First, it should bring out more voters at the first election than usually attend a primary. Second, it may fie- quently save the city money in conducting the sec- ond election, and in rare cases may entirely obviate the necessity ora second election. For smaller cities the system of nomination by petition without holding a pr.imary election may have merit in limit- lng candidates to those who have substantial sup- port. In small Cities a fairly high percentage of voters may be required to sign a nomination, but in no case over ten percent. In larger places the per- centage requirement should be made smalter,-say from three to five percent in cities of over 5,000 population. Substantial petition requirements are rare in Minnesota, however. What is needed in any city to assure that successful candidates have major- it,/voter support will depend on local election ex- perience; in many cities, especially small cities, the problem is in attracting enough candidates, not too many. 'i !5. Preferential voting. When the q~estion of elections is under discussion it is very common to have the system of preferential voting proposed or at least brought up for discussion. Preferential vot- ing is a scheme by which a voter may designate not only a first but a second and a third choice, or even more, among the candidates for a particular office.. The essential idea is to bring about true majority eiections, where there ale three or more candidates for an office. The various methods by which this is done need not be described here. It is sufficient to say that this system was used in the state elections in 1912 under a law of that year and immediately discarded by the next legislature. The city of Duluth tried the plan about the same time under its 1912 charter. The election of a municipal judge by this method was contested, the case going finally to the Supreme Court which decided that preferential voting is contrary to our state constitution and therefore unlawful in this state.13 However desira- ble preferential voting may be, therefore, no city should attempt to provide for it until our constitu- tion has be~n.changed. !16. Proportional representation. Proportional representation in the council for all parties, groups, and factions in the city may have its appeal to 13Brown v. Smallwood, 130 Minn. 492, 153 N.W. charter commission members who are conscious of the weaknesses of the more traditional methods of electing councilmen. The "Hare system" of propor- tional representation, or something similar to it, has been very widely adopted in European countries as well as elsewhere throughout the world not only for municipal' elections but also for the choice of members of the legislature or parliament. The cen- tral idea in this plan is to make the council or legis- lature a truly representative and deliberative body by giving to every political group rep{esentation according to its numbers. Thus if there were 1,000 voters in the community with ten councilmen to be chosen, as far as possible every 100 voters who could agree on a candidate unanimously should be atlowed to elect him. Neither under the ward sys- tem nor through our present methods of election at large are groups given proportional r. epresenta- tion. The dominant group in most cases gets more than it deserves, but sometimes a minority group can actually elect a majority of the city council. Thus the majority may be unduly free to. work its will, or 'it may be entireiy defeated. Under the Hare system of proportional representation it is justly claimed that parties and groups get what they de- serve and no more. In order to carry out the plan of proportional re- presentation at least four or five representatives or' councilmen must be elected f~om a district, ot in other words a city council or commission of five would have to be elected at large. The ~,oter would then mark his ballot with the figure 1 after the can- didate of his first choice, 2 after his second choice, and so on to as many choices as he cares to exer- cise. A system of countingand distribution of votes is then followed which results in the counting of every vote for some candidate of the voter's choice but no vote can be counted'f6r more than one can- didate. The counting process is not complicated, but it would.take too long to explain it here. One difficulty in using this scheme in any city where it is not used generally for all elections is that the voter gets confused and marks crosses, as he is ac- customed to do, instead of figures. This spoils his ballot. The number of spoiled ballots is sometimes very high. Furthermore, the counting of ballots is a long and cumbersome p:-ocess and ordinary vot- ing machines cannot be used for voting and tabu- lating. Another possible objection in Minnesota is that the scheme may be unconstitutional.. Prefer- ential voting was declared illegal both in Michigan and in Minnesota; and the Michigan court also held proportional representation in,,alid. At one time, however, New York City adopted proportional re- -9-