SHARE POLITICAL LEADERSHIP FAIRLY

USATODAY
12/6/2000

iIf there is one certain outcome of this most uncertain of presidential elections, it is that state legislatures and Congress will scramble to fix election flaws. Legislators should seize this chance to right a systemic political wrong: the lack of women in elected office.

The much-touted fact that record numbers of women are in Congress and statehouses masks the real story of women's painstaking crawl toward proportional political power. Women will comprise less than 14% of both the House and Senate in the Congress that begins next month. The country will have the most women in history serving as governors -- a dismal five out of the 50 states. In state legislatures, women will continue to hold less than a quarter of all seats.

But a straightforward change in election rules could speed up women's crawl toward equity: proportional representation. It has proved a boon to women's political power in other Western democracies and could double the number of U.S. women in state and federal political offices in just a decade, says Rob Richie, director of the Center for Voting and Democracy.

Proportional representation replaces winner-take-all districts with multi-seat ones. A congressional district could have two or more seats instead of one; a state senate of 50 seats could have 10 five-member districts or five 10-member districts. If a party won 40% of the vote in a 10-seat district, it would get four seats.

Favorable aspects
The larger number of seats would pressure parties to include women on their slates rather than risk looking discriminatory. Voters who shy away from female candidates still would vote for their party's two-gender slates. Those afraid to "waste" their votes on a long-shot female challenger in a winner-take-all race may reconsider if she's part of a slate. Women also may be more apt to become candidates if their chances of success are better as part of a party's slate.

Proportional representation works. Countries that use it -- Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands -- have three times the female representation of our Congress. Sweden's legislature is 43% female. In Germany, Italy and New Zealand, which have both multi-seat districts and U.S.-style single seats, women win seats in proportional-representation races at three times the rate of the winner-take-all elections.

"The leading predictor of women's success in national elections, when tested against all other variables, is use of proportional representation," notes the Center for Voting and Democracy.

Hybrids available
Some critics say Americans would find proportional representation too complicated or novel. But some of its forms allow voting for individual candidates. Open-list systems, for instance, give voters the option of either voting for a complete party slate or for each of the individuals offered by that party's column. A mixed-member system allows voters to cast ballots for individual candidates in one column and the party of their choice in another. Half the winners come from the results of the winner-take-all individual votes, while the other half are apportioned by party.

Some argue that changing voting systems requires a constitutional amendment. The current balloting dilemma dramatically illustrates that this is a mistaken view. The Constitution clearly grants the power to select election systems to the states and Congress. Thomas Jefferson left some instructive comments as well when he said, "institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times."

During this time of historic focus on how we pick our leaders -- the heart of our democracy -- we have a chance to bring women more completely into our political leadership. With proportional representation, our legislatures would begin to look like the citizens they represent. That is the kind of election change that truly would strengthen our democracy.

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