On the topic of state-level electoral reform in the US, particularly regarding the representation of states in Congress: It was pointed out to me that while it is true that states have a large amount of leeway in determining what method they use to elect their representatives, Section 2c of Title II of the US Code does impose one big restriction: states must appoint their House representatives using only single-member districts. The relevant text reads:

> Representatives shall be elected only from districts so established, no district to elect more than one Representative

In the Center for Election Science discord channel, there has been some discussion as to whether this prohibits using proportional representation to appoint a state’s House delegation. This hinges largely around how the legal text is interpretted. There are two interpretations that seem plausible to me:

Interpretation 1: Forms of proportional representation are viable: While single-member districts must be used, outcomes outside of a given district may influence the resolution of the election within the district. Under this interpretation, “only from” means that representatives must be residents of their district, and while “no district [may] elect more than one Representative”, the voters are ultimately an attribute of the state, not the district, so voters living within the boundaries of a district may influence the result of the election in more than one district.

Interpretation 2: Proportional representation is not viable: “No district to elect more than one Representative” requires each voter to be tied strictly to a single district, and as a part of that district, may not influence the election of a Representative in any other district. “Only from districts so established” means that only factors occuring within a given district may influence the outcome of that district.

A first look at the intentions of Congress when this law was enacted does not bode well for the PR-friendly interpretation: The requirement for single-member districts was put in place due to some states using state-wide bloc voting, a method which ensured that the representatives of a state all represented a similar viewpoint, locking minorities out of being able to participate in the legislative process. While the methods that me and others in the reform community are considering aim to increase, not inhibit, the representation of minorities in goverment, it’s easy to conceive of methods that would be enabled by the first interpretation, which would replicate the problematic dynamics of the earlier bloc-voting. Based on the example of such a constructed method, it could be argued that it is clear that the second interpretation, and not the first, is in line with Congress’ goals in implementing the single-member district limitation, and therefore there are no forms of proportional representation that are compatible with Title II §2c.

But yet, when I think back on the few bits of American case law that I am familiar with (I am not a lawyer), it is very common for the Supreme Court to decide cases using rules of thumb motivated by the intentions of the legislature in enacting a law, not by merely blindly following the letter of the law, and these rules of thumb often contain layers of nuance not present in the original text. The following “Representation Principle” would be an interpretation of Title II §2c not out of place in my understanding of American common law:

> A state must use single-member districts to elect its Representatives, but events that occur outside of a given district may influence the result in a district, provided that the overall effect of the influence is to make the final outcome in the state’s delegation more properly represent the diversity of voter’s viewpoints, and not to distort said diversity.

This would rule out minority-obscuring bloc voting (which we don’t want), but would allow forms of proportional representation to be used (which can have great positive effects).

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While it’s not clear to me which of the 3 interpretations I present would hold up in a court of law, I would find it valuable to illustrate at least one possibility of how such a single-member district form of proportional representation could be implemented. There are probably better methods, but this can at least get a conversation started (Since I like cardinal voting methods, this is based on Approval Voting; extending this to Score Voting or STAR is offered as an excercise to the reader):

1. Candidate Lists may be submitted containing up to one candidate per region. Candidates may also choose to run independantly.
2. Voters are given a ballot where they may indicate either approval or disapproval for each candidate in their region, and also indicate a single Candidate List which they support
3. A candidate’s Approval Score is the fraction of approval votes they received out the the ballots cast in their district; The Frontrunner of each district is whichever candidate in said district had the Approval Score
4. If a list either receives at least 3% of the total List votes, or has the Frontrunner in at least 2 districts, they will receive a Guaranteed Seats; otherwise the Guaranteed Seats will be 0 (though they will have a chance to win seats in later steps)
5. A List’s Guaranteed Seats is the total number of seats to be filled in the election, multiplied by the fraction of total List votes received by said List, multiplied by nine-tenths, rounded down to the nearest whole number; but no more than 17% of the seats to be filled
6. The guaranteed seats will be filled as follows:
   1. Create a roll by ranking all districts according to the Approval Score of the Frontrunner, with the most-approved district at #1, and descending therefrom. Discard from this roll any districts whose Frontrunner’s party has no more Guaranteed Seats to fill.
   2. The Frontrunner of the first district on the roll wins their district’s election. Remove the district from the roll.
   3. If the just-appointed candidate’s party now has filled all their Guaranteed Seats, remove from the roll any remaining districts whose Frontrunner is from said party
   4. Return to step 2 until either all Guaranteed Seats are filled, or parties with Guaranteed Seats remaining has no candidates named on the roll
   5. If there are parties with remaining Guaranteed Seats, but no candidates named on the roll, then rank all candidates from those parties whose district has not yet been resolved, according to the Approval Score of each candidate minus the highest Approval Score received by any candidate in their district, with the highest difference at the #1 spot. Appoint candidates from this roll until all Guaranteed Seats have been appointed, removing parties as they attain their Guaranteed Seats, and removing candidates if their district is resolved before they are appointed.
7. For any remaining districts that have not yet been resolved, the winner in the district is the candidate with the highest Approval Score