Something like that is needed here. Run all four city commissioner races at the same time. Each voter gets four votes. Then at least one outsider could have a chance.

But Randolph McLaughlin, who represented a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the goal was not merely to encourage more Hispanics to vote but "to create a system whereby the Hispanic community would be able to nominate and elect a candidate of their choice."

Couldn't they have done that before by simply showing up to vote?

Oh yeah Bark. It's perfect for Portland.

Smart.

How about open borders too?

Since you're a tax lawyer, I presumed you know that lots of corporations use that system for board elections. It's called cumulative voting and it's a pretty good system for getting some minority views heard while allowing the majority to win the majority of seats.

Winner-take-all systems (like what we all think of as "the way to vote," which is known as "first past the post") don't allow minorities to win representation just by showing up to vote -- instead they ensure that a bloc of voters that forms a plurality gets 100% of the seats.

Bark's idea is a good one - even better would be to use rankings (1, 2, 3 ...). That system provides for the fewest wasted votes (meaning that the most voters see their vote help elect someone). The nice thing about either system is the idea of forcing all candidates into a single race so that incumbents have to keep competing for seats. In an at-large city, there's no reason to invent fictitious "seats" and let incumbents own them. Every election, all the candidates should compete for all the seats to be filled, and let ones with the most support take them.

Proof that some parts of the VRA need to be repealed.

People have a right to vote, not a right to have their group proportionally represented in the legislature.

I'm with Seldes on this one. Another benefit is that it prevents individual districts from being Gerrymandered to dilute concentrations of minority voters to the point where there is no representation.

Regarding the comment People have a right to vote, not a right to have their group proportionally represented in the legislature, note that with cumulative voting, (1) everybody gets the six (or whatever) votes, not just the minority, (2) it can backfire if there is more than one candidate representing a minority and both might otherwise have enough support to be elected under the present one-vote system, and (3) it's already somewhat sanctioned - there's nothing in the US Constitution that forbids a state from using cumulative voting to elect House and Senate representatives, suggesting that the founding fathers understood this kind of voting process and purposely avoided any mention of how the individual states elected members.

I could see a system in Portland for example where if three of the city council slots came up for election, including the mayor, everyone would get three votes. One could use all three of them for one candidate or spread them around as one chooses.

"People have a right to vote, not a right to have their group proportionally represented in the legislature."

Said the line-drawers throughout America until the voting rights cases that established one person-one vote as a matter of right.

If there is no right for any group to have "their group proportionally represented in the legislature" then there is no right for a MAJORITY group to win a majority of the seats, is there?

George, of course you are right. I just wish there was a way to get rid of the idiots on the city council by overpowering the union - blue - bicyclist vote.

Insanity, thy name is jurisprudence....

I understand the principle behind proportional voting, cumulative voting, etc. But in this case it sounds too much like a judge is changing the rules in order to have the outcome that he thinks is right.

Will judges be able to change the rules back whenever they don't like the outcomes of cumulative voting? Is the voting system in any particular part of the country going to depend on whether the election result satisfies the local federal judge? Lots of room for abuse here.

Judges shouldn't decide election systems. That is a decision for Congress, the legislatures, or the people.

By the way, the Economist once looked at all sorts of voting systems to find the one that, in their judgment, was the fairest. The one they selected was very close to the system used in Italy, which has the least-stable government in western Europe.

It never occurred to them that, maybe, "fairness" wasn't the only criteria to use when evaluating electoral systems. It doesn't matter how fair your system is if it leaves you economically weakened and vulnerable to takeover by some outside group or nation.

Funny that people complain about government instability and cite places like Italy but then don't notice that places like Portland and the US Government are VERY stable -- i.e., you can't blast the incumbents out with dynamite.

The "least stable" slur against Italy is absurd, actually. Italy has a parliamentary system, not a presidential one. When the leaders lose support, the government falls and a replacement that commands popular support is put in place, just like in England. The bureaucracy stays, the courts stay, the civil service stays -- just the pols change. What's so bad about that? We had an appointed president who was able to lie us into a war and eke out a dubious victory in a second election (the US never once having replaced a president running for reelection while troops were fighting overseas) -- and then we were stuck with this clown for another four years of misrule and plundering.

I'd far rather have the ability to replace the government when it loses popular support than what we have here, where admitted liars like Sam Adams and SC-Gov. Mark Sanford remain in office, essentially unaccountable for their conduct.

The argument that "judges shouldn't decide election systems" would essentially leave oppressed minority groups with no remedy for election systems with structures that are set up to exclude them.