The Year in Political Reform 2024: Proportional Representation

What is Proportional Representation?

“Proportional representation” describes a class of voting methods that allows groups of voters to elect candidates in proportion to their overall share of votes cast. In contrast, winner-take-all methods award every seat in an electoral district to the candidate or candidates who win the most votes, allowing a single party or group to win all the representation in that district. Under a purely proportional system, for example, a party or group of candidates who win a third of the total votes cast in an election would win about a third of the seats up for election. Under a winner-take-all method, however, that same party or group of candidates could end up with a majority of seats or even no seats at all, depending on how (and if) that jurisdiction is split into districts and what the vote breakdown is within each district.

While most American elections use winner-take-all voting methods, there is a history of proportional and semi-proportional voting methods at the local and even the state levels. In the early 20th century, two dozen American cities adopted the proportional form for ranked choice voting, including major cities like New York, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. Illinois used cumulative voting, a semi-proportional voting method, to elect its House of Representatives for over a century, and Puerto Rico uses another semi-proportional method called the single non-transferable vote, which is a form of limited voting, to elect some seats in both chambers of its legislature.

This is still an emerging reform, and the implementation and results of the Portland reform’s first election will have a ripple effect much like Portland’s passage did.

Why are we tracking it?

Reformers have become increasingly interested in proportional representation voting methods because of their potential to produce elected bodies that more closely reflect voter preferences, lead to more competitive elections, and reduce or eliminate the impact of gerrymandering. Proportional representation has been used to elect some local offices in places like Minneapolis, MN and Cambridge, MA,16 for decades, but Portland, OR’s adoption of proportional RCV to elect its entire city council has sparked greater national interest in proportional methods. Many proposals for state voting rights acts include provisions for using proportional and semi-proportional voting methods as potential remedies due to their ability to secure representation for minority communities when those who draw electoral districts can’t (or won’t) create a majority-minority district.

Categories and definitions:

List systems are proportional representation methods that award seats to political parties or slates of candidates based on each party or slate’s voteshare.
- In closed list systems, voters vote for a party or slate.
- In open list systems, voters vote for the individual candidates who are each identified with a particular party or slate and whose combined votes are used to determine the vote share of their party or slate.

Proportional ranked choice voting (proportional RCV), also known as “the single transferable vote,” is a form of ranked choice voting used to proportionally elect multiple candidates. Instead of electing the candidate who receives a majority of votes, proportional RCV elects candidates using a threshold determined by the number of people who will be elected. An election to fill two seats requires each winning candidate to get more than a third of the votes to win, one to fill three seats requires each candidate to win more than a fourth of the votes, and so on.

Semi-proportional methods are voting methods that can allow groups of voters to elect candidates in proportion to their vote share under certain conditions but do not necessarily guarantee a proportional outcome. Like proportional RCV, semi-proportional methods allow voters to vote for individual candidates and do not require candidates to run as part of a slate or party list. Most semi-proportional methods elect the individual candidates with the most votes (e.g., In an election to fill three seats, the three candidates who receive the most votes win). Types of semi-proportional methods include:
- Cumulative voting – A voting method that provides voters with as many votes as there are candidates to be elected and allows voters to give multiple votes to the same candidate. In an election to fill three seats, for example, a voter could vote for three different candidates, give one candidate two votes and another candidate one vote, or give three votes to the same candidate.
- Limited voting – A voting method that allows voters to vote for fewer candidates than there are candidates to be elected. In an election to fill five seats, for example, a voter might be able to vote for up to three candidates.

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➤ See the full list of bills we tracked (PDF)

Analysis

PRCV Bans. Last year’s edition of this report tracked the rise of RCV bans, but this is the first year we logged a ban specifically including the proportional form of ranked choice voting: SB 1610 from Oklahoma, which was sponsored by Republicans and died without receiving a hearing. The bill proposed a ban on all ranked voting methods, including ranked choice voting, instant runoff voting, and proportional ranked voting. While the language in some previous RCV ban bills would have applied to proportional RCV, this is the first time we’ve seen legislation explicitly prohibiting any proportional voting method.

Portland’s influence. The passage of Portland, Oregon’s Measure 288 in 2022 raised the profile of proportional methods in multi-winner RCV elections. The city’s Charter Review Commission Report found that the city’s form of government needed serious modernization, and recommended an innovative slate of reforms that expanded the size of the City Council with multi-member districts, elected proportionally through ranked choice voting. This year, there were three proposals (VA HB 841, WA HB 2250 and SB 6156) allowing for local adoption of proportional methods and two proposals (CO HB 1147, NY S8474) extending municipal use of PRCV to specific jurisdictions. Additionally, there was one bill in Massachusetts (H3790, introduced in 2023 but incorporated into study bill H4573 in 2024) proposing an alternate form of city government with many similar elements to Portland’s model – using closed-list proportional RCV to elect nine at-large city council members. While none of these bills were successful this year, they represent the ripple effect of Portland’s first-of-its-kind adoption. This ripple effect might also be responsible for the PRCV ban that was introduced this year in Oklahoma (SB 1610).

PRCV as a VRA remedy. Still, by far the biggest trend in this category is the inclusion of proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV) as a remedy for violations of a State Voting Rights Act. Proportional representation is an important component of State Voting Rights Acts because some election methods can be used in a way that dilutes the voting power of minorities and violates the Voting Rights Act, but that’s much more difficult under proportional representation. Proportional representation ensures that all groups are fairly represented, which results in minority-preferred candidates winning more seats in proportional elections compared to single-member districts. That makes PR a uniquely effective legal remedy to protect the rights of voters, and it means state-level Voting Rights Acts are an important opportunity to expand the use of proportional representation.

This is still an emerging reform, and the implementation and results of the Portland reform’s first election will have a ripple effect much like Portland’s passage did.