Cumulative Voting in Texas
Background: Cumulative Voting in Texas
Cumulative voting represents an alternative to the single-member district form of representation that characterizes government on all levels in Texas and the United States. Cumulative voting systems allow voters to cast as many votes as there are seats on a particular board or commission. Candidates must run for a specific seat (e.g., seat #5) as they do in single-member district representation. However, voters can use all their votes on a single candidate or distribute their votes among the contenders for several seats.
In 1995, the Texas Legislature passed and then Governor Bush signed legislation that allowed school districts to switch to cumulative voting. Cumulative voting received an extra boost a few years later when several concerned Black and Latino residents with the support of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sued the city of Amarillo. The plaintiffs in the Amarillo suit claimed that the city's system for electing the school board unfairly diluted minority votes, denying African Americans and Latinos adequate representation.[1]
Before the new system was implemented, Amarillo had a system for electing school board members that combined elements of single-member districts and a variation of at-large representation called "at-large, numbered-place." Such at-large systems are often used for boards, commissions, panels, chambers, and other multi-member representative bodies. In such systems all members are elected from across the jurisdiction – in this case, the entire city of Amarillo. "Numbered-place" means that candidates have to declare which of the several seats they are running for.
In effect, Amarillo's seven-member school board was really composed of seven perfectly overlapping single-member districts, with each district comprising the entire city. The result was that the Anglo majority among the citizenry decided the outcome of elections for every seat on the school board, electing not a single Black or Latino since the 1970s.
The two sides settled on a cumulative voting system going into the 2000 elections, which resulted in the election of an African American man and a Latina. In the next elections in May 2002 a second Latina was elected to the board.
[1] Footnote: The Amarillo case is discussed in detail at the Institute for Local Self Reliance website under the New Rules Project http://www.newrules.org/gov/amarillo.html, accessed July 20, 2004. Also, see "A Voting Reform That Works Is Transforming Texas" by John Nichols in The Nation, May 7, 2002. http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=54, accessed July 20, 2004.
Texas Statute: Texas Cumulative Voting Statute May 2002
The following section of the Texas Education Code was signed into law by Governor George W. Bush on May 30, 1995.
Texas Education Code, Chapter 11
ß 11.054. Electing Trustees by Cumulative Voting
(a) The board of trustees of an independent school district that elects its trustees at large or at large by position may order that elections for trustees be held using the cumulative voting procedure described by this section.
(b) At an election at which more than one trustee position is to be filled, all of the positions that are to be filled at the election shall be voted on as one race by all the voters of the school district. Each voter is entitled to cast a number of votes equal to the number of positions to be filled at the election [emphasis added].
(c) A voter may cast one or more of the specified number of votes for any one or more candidates in any combination. Only whole votes may be cast and counted.
(d) If a voter casts more than the number of votes to which the voter is entitled in the election, none of the voter's votes may be counted in that election. If a voter casts fewer votes than entitled, all of the voter's votes are counted in that election.
(e) The candidates who are elected are those, in the number to be elected, receiving the highest numbers of votes.
(f) If the board of trustees adopts an order requiring the use of cumulative voting, only the trustee positions that were scheduled to be elected at the election are filled through the use of cumulative voting.
(g) An independent school district that adopts an order requiring the use of cumulative voting may not elect its members by position as provided by Section 11.058.
Added by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 260, ß 1, eff. May 30, 1995.
Full Source: Center for Voting and Democracy, http://www.fairvote.org/library/statutes/texas.htm, accessed on July 20, 2004.