Third Proposal: Mixed-Member Legislature

My third proposal is that the Unicameral legislature will be a mixed-member system. The new Illinois General Assembly will contain all of the legislators, but with a mix of their term lengths, a mix of the district sizes and a mix of the voting process for electing the Legislators. As will be discussed in a following post, the election process will use proportional representation, but before I dive into that, I'd like to use this post to discuss the proposed make-up of my proposed General Assembly.

Of the new 249-member body, I propose the following:

• 123 Representatives elected to two-year terms.
• 84 of which will be called District Representative; and
• 39 are called At-Large Representatives.

• 126 Senators elected to 4-year terms. The elections for Senators will be staggered so that one-half (63) will be elected every-other two-year cycle.

So about half of the members will be on a two-year term and the other half are on a four-year term and the vast majority (75%) are up for election every two years. I believe it is important to maintain the two-year election cycle, yet allow some members to remain for four years to allow them to have a longer view of some issues and prevent issues du jour to carry influence.

More important is the type of districts and the type of elections.

• The 84 District Representative will be elected from 28 districts of 3 Representatives elected proportionally. These would currently be districts of about 450,000 citizens.
• Four of the Representative Districts would be combined into one Senate District for a total of 7 Senate Districts. In each of these 7 Districts, there would be 18 Senators, with 9 of them elected for four-year terms every two years. These 7 Senate Districts would be quite large (1.8 million citizens) but with 9 Senators being elected proportionally, the low election threshold (10%) would allow a very diverse set of Senators to be elected, representing varying views across the whole district.
• The remaining 39 At-Large Representatives would not have districts, but would instead be elected statewide. They would be elected using a Party List system (more on Proportional systems in a later post) and would be used to "even-out" the Legislature to make sure the political parties and coalitions statewide are reflected properly in the General Assembly. There would, for example, be a 5% threshold meaning that if a minority party got 5% statewide, but for some reason at the district level, they did not get 5% of the seats, they would pick-up At-Large seats to get their fair representation.

This may seem very complicated and very new to a lot of folks, but the real benefits come when you understand how the proportional voting systems will allow more meaningful representation and much, much more competitive elections--statewide. You also have to realize that this kind of mixed-member proportional system is the norm around the world--it's how most democracies are constructed. We in America are the odd ones out with our gerry-mandered, uncompetitive, two-party, "Winner-Take-All" system.

Second Proposal: Slightly Larger General Assembly

My second, brief, proposal is to slightly increase the size of the Illinois General Assembly. Today's GA has 118 House members and 59 Senators for a total body of 177 members. With Illinois' 12+ million citizens this means that we average over 70,000 citizens per General Assembly member. This ratio makes Illinois one of the highest 6 or 7 states for citizens per state representative. That's not a good ratio to have. The median (25th) state has a much lower ratio of under 30,000 citizens per representative. Illinois would have to have over 400 members to get that low. Vermont has the lowest ratio in the Union at 3,300 citizens per representative. So it is my contention that Illinois citizens are getting a bad deal out of our small General Assembly, relative to other states, therefore, I want to increase it.

However, Illinois has a history of resisting larger bodies (see: Cut-Back) so I know there could be quite a push-back against this. Concerns over cost and "too large" a body are legitimate. Therefore, my increase would be modest. I would like to bring out current ratio of 70,000 citizens per representative down to about 50,000. Note, that this would still be much higher than the median state, in fact, Illinois would still be in the top 10 or dozen states with high ratios.

My proposal is to increase the General Assembly to 249 members, up from 177. As stated in my first proposal, this would be a unicameral General Assembly and these members will be elected in a "mixed" system using proportional representation, which is the subject of my next posts.

For more information on other state's legislature sizes, see this link.

First Proposal: Unicameral General Assembly

Bicameralism, or having two distinct legislative bodies, at the state level is an outdated institution. The “Great Compromise” that devised bicameralism at the Federal level was done to balance the small/big state dilemma when 13 colonies were forging a new union. It is not apparent to me why this legislative structure was then carried over to State legislatures. We don’t have this for City Councils and County Boards. Other democratic institutions, non-profits or corporate boards, for example, don’t use bicameralism, so why do we at the State level? Nebraska is one state in the Union that has a unicameral system, and I’ve never heard it fails them. Therefore, my proposal is to end bicameralism and implement a one-body, unicameral General Assembly.

The obvious main benefit of unicameralism, as I see it, is that by keeping the legislative process in one body, there clearly are gains in efficiency and the speed of the deliberative process. While I think that’s somewhat important, I think the real benefits are more subtle and I believe that, in fact, the legislative process will be more open and transparent as well. Two bodies sometimes compete against each other in time and attention, and much time is spent negotiating “differences” between the two, with each body capable of “vetoing” the other’s bills. In fact, quite often much time is spent in one body adjusting legislation based on the perception of what might happen in the other body. While this competition and negotiation should remain and in fact should be supported—that is in essence what the legislative process is—let that happen in one body. Let coalitions and parties form within the body to hash out those differences. Citizens will appreciate the transparency from unicameralism as it will be easier to “see” the coalitions and the negotiations, letting the merits of the bills be argued, instead of the brokering between two independent bodies.

Arguments against unicameralism will probably be of the nature that two bodies force a well thought-out, deliberative process, and that one body will bring about hastily passed legislation. It’s not an easy argument to go against—there’s some merit to that. I think, though, it should not be automatically assumed that a bill that is passed by two bodies necessarily is the best bill, or was necessarily the “will” of the people. The longer, more “deliberative” process may actually put out a more butchered, ugly result. I just don’t think it’s guaranteed that the outputs in bicameralism are always better, just because two bodies approved it.

Another related argument will be that bicameral legislatures are better because typically the two bodies have differences in how they’re structured, for instance, larger districts, longer terms in the so-called “upper” house. Legislative rules may also be different, for instance, how committees are assigned and created. These differences allow bills to be looked at from two supposedly “different” perspectives. This has merits too. But in general, I believe that some of the “good” parts of bicameralism can be maintained by incorporating those concepts into a unicameral system, primarily by having a diverse, mixed system of elections and term lengths in the unicameral system, which will be the subject of an upcoming post.

A Vision

A Vision for Illinois Democracy....

• Imagine elections where there is more than one name on the ballot.
• Imagine there being many names on the ballot.
• Imagine there being more than two political parties to choose from.
• Imagine there being three, four or five viable political parties to choose from.
  
• Imagine that voting for a "third party" doesn't mean "spoiling" an election or having to pick from the lesser of two evils.
• Imagine every election in all parts of the state being competitive, not just in a few swing districts.
• Imagine there not being any gerrymandering.
• Imagine the winning party actually having to enact the platform they ran on.
• Imagine money not playing such a big role in elections.