In Massachusetts, the election is over. I exaggerate a little. There are still some contests at the top of the ticket. But when it comes to the people who really make the laws, set the budget, and determine the direction our government will take--when it comes to the legislature, the results are in already. Speaker Finneran and Senate President Birmingham can stop worrying about the campaign and start trying to clear up the huge backlog of bills. The Democrats' continuing control of the House and Senate is assured.

Voters will cast their ballots November 3, but those ballots cannot elect a Republican majority, for one simple reason: only 18 of the 40 Senate districts, and 61 of the 160 House districts have Republican candidates (click here to download the candidate list).

Nineteen incumbent Democratic senators are unopposed, and three more Senate districts have only Democrats running. There are also six unopposed Republican candidates. That leaves only 15 districts where voters get to choose and only 12 where they can choose between parties.

The situation in the House is just as bad. There are 71 Democrats, all but one of them incumbents, with no opponent, while another 27 are running only against other Democrats. On the Republican side 16 representatives, all incumbents, are unopposed, as is the House's only independent, David Gately. That gives the Democrats an automatic majority of at least 36. Voters get to choose in only 67 of the 160 districts, and to choose between parties in only 45.

Why this lack of competition? There are many reasons, including the difficulty of beating an incumbent and the need of Acting Governor Cellucci, a Republican, to conciliate the Democrats if he wants to pass any legislation. However, there is a more basic reason in our system of single-member districts. Each incumbent has the opportunity to get such a stranglehold on his or her district as to become unbeatable--and few potential opponents want to enter a hopeless race. Unfortunately, any voters who do not like the incumbent are excluded from the process.

Massachusetts has only had this system since 1975; before that we had multimember districts for the House, and a lot more competition. Other systems are available, such as cumulative voting or proportional representation. Each has its merits; any of them would give us a more competitive, and a more representative political system. Perhaps it is time to consider a change.

For background reading on proportional representation and other improvements in the electoral system, see my page on Election Law Reform .

See also the webpage of the Center for Voting and Democracy.