I wrote this report for Protect Democracy on the relationship between proportional representation and the Voting Rights Act. Here’s some of the introduction:

First, the report provides background information about these topics. In particular, PR can refer to either a certain kind of electoral system or rough equivalence between a group’s share of votes in a jurisdiction and its share of legislative seats. Second, the report discusses the legal vulnerability of PR systems under the VRA. In most cases — when these systems are working as expected — they create little risk of VRA liability because they represent minority voters at least as well as (often better than) single-member districts plausibly could. Third, the report comments on PR systems as potential remedies for VRA violations. PR systems (including related semi-PR approaches) have been adopted to cure racial vote dilution dozens of times — typically through settlements, and occasionally at the request of defendants.

Fourth, the report explores the emerging role of PR systems under state voting rights acts (SVRAs). Certain SVRAs explicitly or implicitly contemplate conversion to PR or semi-PR systems to remedy statutory violations. Certain SVRAs also abandon deference to defendants with respect to choices among remedies — a feature of VRA doctrine that has sometimes prevented the adoption of PR systems. Lastly, the report identifies potential federal and state reforms that could facilitate wider conversion to PR systems through voting rights litigation. Federally, the VRA could recognize these systems as available remedies and drop the requirement that minority populations be geographically compact. At the state level, SVRAs could not merely acknowledge the availability of these systems but also favor or even mandate their use over other options.