LOOKING over the results of the latest telephone poll done by students of Dr. Ron McNinch at the University of Guam, we wondered – not for the first time – about the fundamental fairness of our at-large, top-down system of filling the 15 seats in the Legislature. Do we really get a body that is representative of our population, or for that matter of the majority of voters who marked their ballots on election day? We don’t think so.

It all sounds fair enough. Every voter can vote for up to, but not more than, 15 candidates. But if you only want to vote for one or two, they’ll each get only one vote. The result is that only a few of the winning candidates get a majority, while a large number of voters waste many of their votes by not casting them. Most of those who win seats are chosen by less than half the number of votes cast. They are, in effect, minority senators.

There is a simple reform that would make this system fairer, and that is to allow cumulative voting – commonly used in corporations as well as organizations like the Guam Visitors Bureau. A number of cities also use the system under court order, due to voter rights violations.

You have 15 votes. If you so choose, you can give a single candidate all 15, or give five votes each to three candidates, and so forth.

Such a voting system can be programmed into tabulation scanners, which will automatically apportion your votes based on the number you cast.

Think what cumulative voting would mean to campaigning. The most attractive, aggressive candidates would really get out there and hustle for your votes (plural) while the also-rans would be effectively weeded out. Organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce or the Guam Federation of Teachers could stump for their favorites and encourage their members to put all their votes on the ones they back.

Perhaps cumulative voting is a little too radical for us. If so, there is another way to ensure that our unicameral Legislature truly represents the island, and that is to go back to dividing the island up into districts based on the population. Such a system produces a result more reflective of the demographic makeup of the island and ensures the most populous areas get the most representation. We had districts at one time, and the idea is brought up again whenever elections roll around; but for reasons both obvious and obscure, the idea doesn’t get the necessary support in the very body it would reform.