Electoral Reform
An often overlooked tool, central to any discussion about improving women’s representation and achieving gender parity, is structural reform of our electoral system.
Our current electoral system is a barrier to gender parity in elective office. It holds women back.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and most state legislatures are elected using single-winner districts, a type of winner-take-all electoral system. In this electoral system, there can be only one winner in each district and there are no incentives for candidates to be cordial to one another. These two factors mean that candidature is risky, the advantages of incumbency are great, and highly adversarial campaigns are the norm.
Single-winner districts in Congress and state legislatures are a significant barrier to achieving gender parity in elected office. They should be reformed and replaced with multi-winner districts and fair representation voting systems.
Our current electoral system is a barrier to gender parity in elective office. It holds women back.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and most state legislatures are elected using single-winner districts, a type of winner-take-all electoral system. In this electoral system, there can be only one winner in each district and there are no incentives for candidates to be cordial to one another. These two factors mean that candidature is risky, the advantages of incumbency are great, and highly adversarial campaigns are the norm.
Single-winner districts in Congress and state legislatures are a significant barrier to achieving gender parity in elected office. They should be reformed and replaced with multi-winner districts and fair representation voting systems.
For over forty years, academics have noted that multi-winner districts elect more women than single-winner districts, both in the United States and abroad. We can see the effectiveness of multi-winner districts in modern day America. Currently, ten states use multi-winner districts to elect at least one house in their state legislature. These ten states rank among the highest for women's representation in their state legislatures. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, after the 2014 elections, three of the five states with the highest percentages of women in their state legislatures used multi-member districts.
Top 5 States for Women's Representation in the State Legislature
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Representation2020 advocates for the use of multi-member districts with fair representation voting systems to elect legislative bodies to aid our progress to gender parity in elected office. When combined with better recruitment practices that increase the recruitment of female candidates and modernized legislative practices that remove the old entrenched bias against female legislators, this reform will increase the representation of women in legislatures across the country.
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Mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, speaks in favor of ranked choice voting and its benefit for women running for office.