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7 Orange County Board of Commissioners Page 2 September 24, 1996 the constitutionality of North Carolina's representational equality-based system far electing boards of commissioners. This very recent decision reversed a federal district court decision which determined that electoral equality was constitutionally required. The United States Court cf Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that when all aspects of equal representation are considered as a whole, it becomes clear that representati,oral equality is at least as important as electoral equality in a representative democracy. And, the decision as to what system to use is a decision that should be made by the State of North Carolina and not the federal courts in the inherently political and legislative process of apportionment. The electoral district choices available to the Board follow. No more than ha.1f of the board may be apportioned to the county at large in each case.l 'A "proportional" or "cumulative" election system has been proposed to you by some members of the Orange County community. Each is a system whereby each voter gets to vote the number of "seats" up for election and may cast all of their seat votes for one candidate or some number of candidates less than the total. Put another way, if there are three seats on the Board of County Commissioners up for election, a voter has a choice of casting as many as three votes for one candidate or casting a vote for each candidate or any combination in between. Orange County has no statutory authority to use this method of electing boards of county commissioners. Further, it is a method of electing county commissioners generally."foreign" nationwide. I am told it has been tried in a few communities, typically to cure past Voting Rights Act violations. Cumulative voting is a common method of voting for members of the board of directors of for-profit corporations and is intended to provide minority stockholders with electoral access to the board of directors. There is no "suspect class" (racial, ethnic, etc. minority) of Orange County voters presently lacking electoral access to the Orange County Board of Commissioners so far as I know. Since there is no interest among the Board in this method of electing commissioners and since i.t is net authorized by North Carolina law, I ha:re done no research into whether a system of cumulative voting in Orange County would conflict with the "one person, one vote" and other important principles of the Voting Rights Act. This research would have to be done before Orange County could undertake s*uch a system of electing its Board of Commissioners. As a final note on this, the practice of "sing.le-shot" voting is a modified method of proportional voting which is authorized under North G.rolina law. If exercised skillfully by a voting i,lnck; ; t can be ve.^~ effective.