That is actually a very good question, Astoria Bob, because so far — if cities or counties voted in a manner other than districts — they had everyone vote for each and every seat. That is, as far as I know and uncovered; it’s a big nation.

That at-large system as it is often called is not proportional voting.

In proportional voting you vote for your choice once for the entire council. One vote, that’s it in total.

Lined up from most-restricted to most-equal:

• District Voting
• At-large Voting
• Proportional Voting

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There is a warp to at-large voting for each and every seat, and let me recreate that warp real quickly here:

Five seats are voted on in this super simplified example to show why ‘at-large’ has a warp to it.

With only five voters this can be made obvious already. Voter 1 has as preferred representative candidate A, Voter 2 has B, Voter 3 has C, etc.

Because they can vote five times most people will then also vote five times (which is actually not smart, but we all think more and bigger is better, right?).

In this example, nobody of the five voters likes the favorite of the other four voters and therefore they vote with their remaining four votes from among F, G, H, I and J.

Guess who is going to win?

F, G, H, I and J.

None of the favorites were voted in.

The collective outcome overwhelmingly removes the individual choice. The candidates will still only be as honest as they need to be because candidates with the largest appeal get more votes. They will stand up less likely for just one specific group and this can undermine the local harmony because it is unfair.

My prediction: if there are five seats, all five will be nicey-nice people in public with at-large elections, just like the entire county culture desires. But with proportional voting, there will be three or four nicey-nice representatives really in line with the culture, and there will be one that likes to turn over some local smelly piles of interest. : -) Naturally, once that pile is turned over, that representative may not return on the board with the next election if things were taken care of well.

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I provided you an extremely simple way of showing the warp. I don’t know of any place that has five council seats and only five voters coming out to vote. So, in reality, the voters may be more or less happy with what they see, but they will not realize what they could have had. If there are eight seats, at-large becomes unmanageable, and the warp even greater.

At-large also means the power is still more on the establishment’s side than on the voters’ side. Only true equality, only the real one-man-one-vote system delivers. Only proportional voting is based on actual individual voter equality.

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I would say it is against the law to vote for more than one candidate as done in at-large, but it also shows that folks at the local level are more or less doing things as it pleases them. They are not following the US Constitution for sure, and perhaps the State constitution allows them to pick their own system, making them think they do not need to follow the US Constitution anymore.

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The ones behind the curtain are keeping a very close eye on how representatives are voted for; the ones behind the curtain can benefit from district winning almost unnoticed, and while at-large is indeed better, there are still ways to manipulate the outcome unnoticed.

With proportional voting, the special interest groups tend to be out front with their candidates, out in the open. When the warp is gone, the system is most honest, and that is a word one does not see often in one sentence with politics.