The alternative vote: Do changes in single-member voting systems affect descriptive representation of women and minorities?

There exist two, conflicting, conventional wisdoms in the United States about which electoral systems best provide for descriptive representation. On the one hand, single-member districts are understood to be the best way to ensure representation for ethnic and racial minority groups, at least when...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Electoral studies 2018-08, Vol.54, p.90-102
Main Authors: John, Sarah, Smith, Haley, Zack, Elizabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cities
Descriptive representation
Districts
Elections
Electoral systems
Instant runoff
Legislatures
Minority groups
Political behavior
Reforms
Representation
Research design
Single-member districts
Social conditions & trends
State legislatures
Voting
Women
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Summary:There exist two, conflicting, conventional wisdoms in the United States about which electoral systems best provide for descriptive representation. On the one hand, single-member districts are understood to be the best way to ensure representation for ethnic and racial minority groups, at least when populations are geographically concentrated. On the other hand, it is well-established that a greater proportion of women are elected in multi-member districts in the United States, especially in state legislatures. At the intersection, minority women are not well served by single-member districts, at least using plurality or majority runoff election, but it is far from clear that multi-member districts are much better. This paper takes a fine-grained approach to electoral systems reform and descriptive representation, exploring the impacts of the reform of the electoral formula in single-member systems in the context of the adoption of the alternative vote (AV) in several California Bay Area cities. Using similar cities in the area that did not adopt AV as controls and a difference-in-differences research design, we show that reform of single-member electoral formulae can have a significant positive effect on descriptive representation.
ISSN:0261-3794
1873-6890
DOI:10.1016/j.electstud.2018.05.009