In October 2001, Barack Obama, Illinois state senator, introduced legislation designed to reintroduce the use of 3-seated elections. In his own words,
"For more than a century, Illinois was a leader in including all points of view in the legislature with three-member districts. It's time that we give voters the chance to bring back cumulative voting."
Until 1980, Illinois used three-member districts for the state House... This ensured that political minorities in each district, such as Chicago Republicans and DuPage Democrats, could elect one of the three representatives. Thus, each [major] party represented the entire state, and not just certain areas.
Perhaps, Kos-folks should demand as appeasement that our president push once again for the use of 3-seated elections for state representatives to make up for his renewal of the Bush tax-cuts.
dlw
Cumulative Voting is more complicated than the election rule advocated for by Strategic Election Reform(SER). SER advocates for a 3-seated Hare Largest Remainder election rule that works almost exactly like our current election rule. For there would be one candidate per party and one vote per voter. The main difference is in how, typically, the top three candidates would all win a seat each.
Because of this, a Local Third (LT) party* could win the third seat with only ten percent of the vote. And, with a lower requirement to win the third seat, it would be easier for the votes of economically disadvantaged minority groups to be decisive in an election. And when these groups votes matter more often for the winning of seats, it should help commit the Democratic party to be more consistent with its' commitment to help historically disadvantaged minority groups...
dlw
*Since SER advocates for the use of multi-seated general elections only in local elections, like for state representatives or city council members, it does not try to even the playing field across all political parties. Third parties would still tend to lose the single-seated winner-take-all elections used in most elections. This selective advocacy for three-seated elections would tend to favor the growth of Local Third (LT) parties that specialize in contesting only local, winnable elections and otherwise vote strategically together as part of their wider civil-issue advocacy. An example of this would be the Progressive Dane partyin Wisconsin. In other words, Strategic Election Reform would help third parties that didn't try to rival the Democratic party. But, in doing so, SER would give progressive activists an additional way to make a difference if the Democratic party doesn't change it's ways...