Cumulative Voting - Voting

Voting

A cumulative voting election permits voters in an election for more than one seat to put more than one vote on a preferred candidate. When voters in the minority concentrate their votes in this way, it increase their chances for obtaining representation in a legislative body. This is different from bloc voting, where a voter may not vote more than once for any candidate, and 51% of voters can control 100% of representation.

Ballots used for cumulative voting differ both in the ways voters mark their selections and in the degree to which voters are permitted to split their own vote. Possibly the simplest ballot uses the equal and even cumulative voting method, where a voter simply marks preferred candidates, as in bloc voting, and votes are then automatically divided evenly among those preferred candidates. Voters are unable to specify a differing level of support for a more preferred candidate, giving them less flexibility although making it tactically easier to support a slate of candidates.

A more common and slightly more complex cumulative ballot uses a points method. Under this system, voters are given an explicit number of points (often referred to as "votes" because in all known governmental elections, the number of points equals the number of seats to be elected) to distribute amongst candidates on a single ballot. Typically, this is done with a voter making a mark for each point beside the desired candidate. A similar method is to have the voter write in the desired number of points next to each candidate. This latter approach is commonly used for corporate elections involving a large number of points on a given ballot, where the voter is given one set of points for each votable share of stock he has in the company. Unless an appropriately programmed electronic voting system is used, however, this write-in ballot type burdens the voter with ensuring that his point allocations add up to his allotted sum.

When used as a facilitation technique for group decision-making this process is often called “multi-voting”. Participants are given stickers or points which they can apply among a list of options; often these are ideas that were generated by the group. Because dot stickers are commonly used for multi-voting, the process is also often called “dot voting”.

In typical cumulative elections using the points system, the number of points allotted to a voter is equal to the number of winning candidates. This allows a voter potentially to express some support for all winning candidates; however, this need not be required to achieve proportional representation. With only one point the system becomes equivalent to a single non-transferable vote in a first-past-the-post system.

Other than general egalitarian concerns of electoral equality, there is nothing in this system that requires each voter to be given the same number of points. If certain voters are seen as more deserving of influence, for example because they own more shares of stock in the company, they can be directly assigned more points per voter. Rarely, this explicit method of granting particular voters more influence is advocated for governmental elections outside corporate management, perhaps because the voters are members of an oppressed group; currently, all governmental elections with cumulative voting award equal numbers of points for all voters.

Unlike choice voting where the numbers represent the order of a voter's ranking of candidates (i.e. they are ordinal numbers), in cumulative votes the numbers represent quantities (i.e. they are cardinal numbers).

While giving voters more points may appear to give them a greater ability to graduate their support for individual candidates, it is not obvious that it changes the democratic structure of the method.

The most flexible ballot (not the easiest to use) allows a full vote to be divided in any fraction among all candidates, so long as the fractions add to less than or equal to 1. (The value of this flexibility is questionable since voters don't know where their vote is most needed.)

Advocates of cumulative voting often argue that political and racial minorities deserve better representation. By concentrating their votes on a small number of candidates of their choice, voters in the minority can win some representation — for example, a like-minded grouping of voters that is 20% of a city would be well-positioned to elect one out of five seats. Both forms of cumulative voting achieve this objective.

In a corporate setting, challengers of cumulative voting argue that the board of directors gets divided and this hurts the company's long term profit. Using a staggered board of directors can diminish the ability of minority factions to obtain representation by reducing the number of seats up for election at any given time.

Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised, which asserts a principle that the majority should have the right to make all decisions, states, "A minority group, by coordinating its effort in voting for only one candidate who is a member of the group, may be able to secure the election of that candidate as a minority member of the board. However, this method of voting, which permits a member to cast multiple votes for a single candidate, must be viewed with reservation since it violates a fundamental principle of parliamentary law that each member is entitled to one and only one vote on a question."