In Opinion to the Governor, 62 R.I. 316 (1939), the Rhode Island state supreme court held that a bill proposing the Hare single tranferable vote proportional representation system for a city in R.I. violated a section of the state constitution which said an elector had the right to vote for all persons to be elected to an office in a given electoral area. Persons wanting a copy of the opinion may directly contact me. Many states have similar vote-for-all provisions. The very difficult remedy is, of course, state constitutional amendments specifying the use of proportional representation in electing state and local legislative bodies. The court's reasoning also applies to single winner (and multi-winner) election reforms in some states having a plurality-elects section in the state's constitution.
