Word: within
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Cambridge has used the system since 1941, with the proclaimed purpose of representing minorities within an elected body meant to serve not just the majority of voters. Indeed, the Cambridge system stands in striking contrast to the form of most state and national elections in the United States. Both are based on the perplexing notion that 51 percent of the vote deserves 100 percent of the representation. In this very manner we elect our Congress and our state legislatures. It is a winner-take-all system that awards disproportionate power to even the slightest majority...
...great preponderance of democratic nations in the world have rejected this distorted form of representation in favor of proportional representation. All but two European nations use this system, as do South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and a number of other emerging democracies. Within these systems, every group is represented in proportion to the number of votes it receives, and thus every vote counts...
...districts with one multi-member district that proportionally elects a number of candidates. This characteristic is paramount in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. Johnson, which struck down race-conscious districting as unconstitutional. Proportional representation is a racially nonbiased means of accomplishing representative minority presence within our political institutions and can serve to convince minority voters of the purpose and value of their votes...
Furthermore, proportional representation has been proven to reduce gender inequalities within elected government. Today, women constitute only 11 percent of the House of Representatives and a mere eight percent of the Senate. Systems of proportional representation, however, have been proven to result in greater numbers of elected women. Indeed, this phenomenon has been substantiated in electoral systems around the world: Sweden has a legislature that is 41 percent female, Norway's is 39 percent and South Africa's is 25 percent, dwarfing America's humiliating figures...
...democratic institutions far from our ideals. Proportional representation, however, would enable candidates to be elected with a truly representative portion of the votes, and helping them concentrate on their assured constituency rather than on high-priced swing votes and creating a far more democratic method of selecting our representatives within all facets of elected government...