For those who are wondering: It appears that the Rhode Island House of Representatives will head back into session tied with the Hawaii State Senate for lowest proportion of Republican representation in a state legislative chamber — each body with only 8% of seats held by Republicans. (There are no chambers with remotely similar levels of Republican dominance: Idaho’s Senate was tops last term, with 80% of seats held by the GOP.)

–Cue the electoral reform rant–

None of this should be surprising — it’s a natural consequence of our electoral system. Legislative membership in plurality-based, two-party elections tends to follow the cube rule. The membership ratio will be approximately equal to the cube of the ratio of support for the parties in the general population. If the ratio of support is 1:1 you’ll tend to end up with an evenly split legislative body. In yesterday’s races for Congress and the US Senate in RI, support broke around 70-30 for Dems. Cube 7:3 and you get the 12-1 ratio that we see in the RI House.

(The ‘rule’ holds when we compare the national presidential results to the Dem-Repub ratio in the incoming House of Representatives.)

The ProJo laments this increased Democratic dominance. I’m happy that the left seems to have picked up several House seats, but I tend to agree that a multi-party body (and by multi, I mean more than two parties) is ideal for a representative democracy, in that it increases the chances that minority voices will achieve representation, decreases propensity for corruption, and increases the likelihood of meaningful dialogue. And, incidentally, from my left-Dem perspective in a Dem-dominated legislature, it’s better to have a conservative Republican hold a given seat than to have a conservative Dem in that seat, as conservative Dems have more pull with leadership than they would were they Repubs.

There appear to be two paths to changing all of this: A more competent RI Republican party, or proportional representation of some sort. Wonder which we’ll see first. Or perhaps increased GOP competence entails their embracing and pushing for PR…

(Honestly — I’m gonna miss Nick Gorham’s rants and raves. Especially if it means Joe Trillo gets more air time.)

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