Unofficial special election results

[ron_newman]

From the city's website:

Marty Martinez - 2372
Jack Connolly - 1814
Robert Daut - 308

Marty and Jack move on to a runoff election on May 15.

The Somerville Journal has results by ward (but not by precinct)

Comments

[cos]

I'm very happy with the results. Marty got 52% in a 3 way race, a 12 point lead over Jack Connolly, which I think gives Marty a big boost for the general. He won in 6 of Somerville's 7 wards, coming in second only in low-turnout ward 1. He even won in ward 6 (Davis Square area), which was supposed to be Jack's base because he'd been ward 6 alderman for so long.

[elements.livejournal.com]

*Awesome*

Thanks Ron and the Somerville Journal for posting results, and Cos for expanding on 'em. It's great to see how well Marty did - and hopefully only even better in the final election in May.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

I'm all for voting systems which reduce the potential for third-party "spoilers", but in the case of someone winning by a majority rather than just a plurality, is there a sensible reason to go through all the expense of the second vote?

I mean, I understand that that's the rules. But are they sensible rules for a reason I'm not getting, or just The Rules?

[ron_newman]

the sensible thing would be Instant Runoff Voting, also known as Single Transferable Vote.

[ckd]

IIRC, Instant Runoff Voting is the single-seat version, while Single Transferrable Vote is used for multi-member elections. The ballots are the same in either case, since each voter just needs to generate a ranked preference list of every candidate they support.

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

That's basically what we've got, except without the instant. And usually, that kicks in only if there isn't a simple majority winner. Hence my question.

[elements.livejournal.com]

... Or Condorcet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_voting) (ie, pair-match) voting, but that's a debate for another day.

[cos]

Well, the way the rules in Somerville work now, if there are two candidates for a position you just have a general election; if there are more than 2, you hold a preliminary to narrow it down to 2 for the general.

A system where if one candidate gets over 50% they win right away would be reasonably, but it would work differently, since people don't want to cancel the general election and you can't tell in advance whether you'll need it. We could have a Louisiana style system where everyone runs in the general (though in Lousiana it's partisan, we could still make it nonpartisan) and then if nobody gets 50% you hold a runoff later. The disadvantage to that is that sometimes you get an elected official after the general election, and sometimes you don't and you need to wait to find out who fills the position.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I grew up in Louisiana, and you don't want to touch that system with a ten foot touching pole. They originally set it up so that the Dem majority could have a runoff between their top two candidates rather than a Dem v. Rep final election. I may be remembering it wrong, but I believe it was a reaction to the first Republican governor in some time being elected in 1984 (Dave Treen). Ironically it turned around bit them in the ass and now many of the finals are between two Republicans.

If you're looking to save money by having fewer elections, then the former Alderman-at-large should have resigned in time for all this to be covered in the regular election cycle.

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

Hello! I also grew up in Louisiana (Baton Rouge). I always had fun explaining that system to friends up here. My summary: when you still base your laws off of Napoleon, weird things happen.

[cos]

Denise Provost got elected state rep last year (2006). The most recent citywide election was in 2005. She can't have resigned "in time" for this to be covered in the regular cycle. She could have stayed on the board for a whole year longer, but she said she was only going to stay as long as she needed to wrap up what she was working on, and that she didn't feel she could do both jobs effectively at the same time. She resigned early so she can do a better job as state rep, so Somerville gets better representation in state government.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

So she couldn't have resigned in time to piggyback on the Federal election cycle in 2006?

[cos]

She could have resigned "in time", but that would've have caused the elections to be combined. That was a state election and there would not have been any city offices on the ballot.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

There's no reason I'm aware of why you can't combine a city special election with a state or federal one. Again, if you're looking to save the city money, that would have been the way to do it rather than looking to spicy cajun methods of changing election methods.

[ron_newman]

I believe she and the city both investigated this, and determined that eve if the local and state elections were to be held at the same time, they would require two separate paper ballots and two separate voter rolls

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Which would still be cheaper than having a separate special election, ja?

[ron_newman]

Maybe, but maybe not -- it could require twice as many poll workers. And it would confuse every voter.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

So I did some quick Googling, and assuming that info is right:

Denise was elected in February. If she had resigned as late as July the special election could have piggy-backed on the Federal with a much lower cost to the city. Apparently if she'd waited a few more weeks to resign (in November instead of October) her replacement would have been appointed. So hurray! We get to vote. But booooo: we could have saved the city some money. If her rationale is that meeting conflicts between the jobs made her resign in October, why didn't she resign over those same meeting conflicts over the summer?

I've voted Provost since '99, but whatever her intentions were this whole thing looks like exactly the kind of politics she used to campaign against.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

The whole system seems kinda silly when you consider Capuano got 23% in winning the Democratic Primary against in a 9-person field back in 1998. In most places I've voted in the past, a majority in the preliminary eliminates the need for a runoff.

[cos]

That's an entirely different system - you're speaking of an election for Congress, which is a partisan primary followed by a general with one nominee from each party plus any independent candidates. Somerville municipal elections work entirely differently.

Now, you're right, having these multicandidate primaries with lots of candidates, vote for one, plurality wins, is a problem. We should have instant runoff for those elections.

But that's a different problem than we're talking about here, under a different set of rules.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I suspect changing to an instant runoff would also mean we'd have to buy all new voting machine equipment which wouldn't be cheap. Say what you want about those scanning machines, but they combine the best of both worlds: electronic counting and easy to follow paper trail.

New isn't always better, and change always has a cost associated with it. I'm also a fan of keeping it simple: there's less chance of people challenging the results with court cases.

[cos]

Optical scan can do instant runoff.

There is a cost, though it may not be as high as you imagine.

However, there's certainly also a cost to having elections constantly pick candidates with minority support. If you think that cost is justifiable, then by extension you should propose we save a lot more money by not having elections at all.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

"Optical scan can do instant runoff."

Can Somerville's? Without making for a ginormous, confusing ballot?

"If you think that cost is justifiable, then by extension you should propose we save a lot more money by not having elections at all."

Please imagine my eye rolling. And we were having such a civil discussion, too.

[ron_newman]

Cambridge uses optically-scanned paper ballots with a preferential (single transferable vote) election.

[cos]

Don't roll your eyes, it's a totally serious point. Without IRV, the system we have no for state elections is fine when there are two candidates, usually passable when there are 3 or 4 (but sometimes bad), and gets worse the more candidates there are. Every time we have an open seat for Congress, we typically get 8-12 candidates in the primary, and the result is almost random. Instant runoff would solve this problem and make all multicandidate elections legitimate - which would be a major improvement even when there are just 3 or 4 candidates, and be the difference between sense and total nonsense for those really large primaries. Sure it costs money, but if you're honestly suggesting that as a reason not to do it, then I can't see any logical reason why you'd want to spend any money on these sorts of elections in the first place.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Here's hoping you'll get a higher turnout for the "real" election... and that could change the results. Everybody who was actually paying attention assumed Jack and Marty would be in the runoff, and I also assume voters who need help getting to the poles will make more of an effort when it counts.

In 2000 we had slightly north of 40,000 registered voters, which means the turnout was something around 10% for this election (assuming some growth in the number of registered voters). I'm hoping that's some kind of record and we get a better turnout in May.

[cos]

Unfortunately, in special elections, turnout is always very very low. 10% is typical. Because there's no drumbeat of election coverage in the media, it's up to the campaigns to turn people out to vote, and you only get the few faithful voters who vote in every election plus however many voters each campaign has the capacity to bug often enough that they know & remember about the special election day.

Since we're going from three campaigns doing that, to just two campaigns, theoretically we should get lower turnout in the general. But since I'm not sure Daut actually did much serious campaigning or turned out a lot of voters, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the turnout was due to Marty and Jack and we'll get about the same turnout in the general.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Less than 10% turnout would be truly depressing.

[ron_newman]

One thing to remember here is that special elections for alderman-at-large don't happen very often. I can't remember another one since I moved here in 1984. In the regular elections for alderman-at-large, there are four seats to fill, and a preliminary is held only when more than eight candidates run (in order to narrow the field to eight).

We've had a couple of three-candidate races for Mayor in recent memory, but both of those were much more evenly matched, with the losing candidate not very far behind the two who continued to the runoff.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

You're correct that Provost couldn't have resigned in time for her seat to be filled by the last regular election. However, she did wait an extraordinary amount of time before resigning. Many say it's because she planned to wait until an election would not be held and she could hand-pick her successor (something which has happened too often in the past and even she used to speak out against that system). However, when she learned she didn't have enough support on the BOA to have Martinez anointed her successor, she resigned at the last possible moment and forced an election. I'm glad there's an election, it's always preferable to an appointment, but let's not get too high and mighty about her reasoning for allowing an election!

[cos]

I don't see any sense in that rumor. There's no way to "anoint" a successor except to endorse him and hope people vote the way you endorse, which she would've had to do no matter when she resigned. When she was running for state rep she told us what she would do, and she did what she said, so I see no reason to concoct outlandish and nonsensical stories to slander her with. Whoever these "many" might be, you're actually the first person I've ever heard mention it, and it's not like I'm out of touch with Somerville politics. I don't think they're very "many" and I don't think they have a clue about it.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I believe I've seen noise like this on the Somerville News blog in the comments section (and maybe in the odious dial-in-and-complain-anonymously section of the Somerville Journal). I haven't seen it anyplace I'd consider a serious news source, and you're right: it doesn't make any sense.

While she could have saved us some money by resigning sooner, at least she did it just soon enough to actually have an election instead of forcing an appointment.

[cos]

Regardless of your opinion on the matter of saving money, the fact is that had she resigned before the state election, this position would not have been on the ballot in the state election.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Maybe we're talking about different things here: I'm specifically talking about the elections we had in fall of 2006.

If you can get referendum questions that didn't even cover all of Somerville on the fall 2006 ballots, why couldn't you have had the alderman general and runoff in September and November?

Are you saying if she had resigned in (for example) May, the aldermen elections couldn't have been on those same ballots in the fall?

I'm genuinely curious: I wouldn't be surprised if there's some wacky Mass law to that effect, but it doesn't really mesh with the local referendum questions that were definitely on those ballots.

[ron_newman]

The "local referendum questions" on the state ballot were actually state advisory questions, limited to particular state legislative districts. In our case, the questions were on ballots only in Denise Provost's district.

I do not know the exact details, but there are apparently sufficient differences between state and local election rolls that would have required separate check-in/check-out tables and separate paper ballots if the two elections were to be combined. Someone told me that state law prohibits any name from being on a paper ballot in two different slots, for instance. That would prohibit anyone from running simultaneously for a city and a state office, even though it's otherwise legal to hold both.

[cos]

It's not particularly "wacky", but city elections and state elections are administered very differently, and have different rules and procedures. For example, all state elections have a 20 day voter registration deadline, but some local elections can have a 10 day deadline (Somerville uses 20). All state elections are one office each, but some kinds of local government can have "vote for N" (such as our alderman at large, which are vote for 4). Although the rules for state elections already have a procedure for getting advisory questions on the ballot locally, these are done by state legislative district, not by city/town. There are no existing procedures for combining a municipal vote with a state election. It's not impossible, but it would take a lot of work figuring out the options, and how things interact, and I doubt anyone would go to the trouble (and expense) for doing it simply for the sake of letting us combine one particular alderman special election into one state election - nor could it take effect quickly, because any changes in election procedures have to leave enough time for voters, elections officials, city clerks, etc. to learn and adapt to the new procedures.

So while it is theoretically possible to combine city and state elections, it's not likely to happen soon, nobody's trying to do it, and there's no way whatsoever that it would've happened in this case, just because Denise chose to resign earlier.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

The Somerville City Charter states that when a sitting office-holder resigns, the office is filled one of 2 ways, depending on how much time is left in the term. A certain amount of time (sorry, can't recall the specifics) allows the BOA to appoint someone to fill the term. When this is done, the current office holders' choice is usually the one appointed. Denise planned to appoint Martinez, but the rest of the board didn't go along with the plan. Therefore, she resigned on the last day possible before it would become an appointment, and thus forced an election. Not a criticism, I usually like Denise, however this points out that she's not really all that different from those she had run against. Let's go back to one of her first races, where this was the issue she ran on, because of a long list of appointments which had taken place in Ward 5.

[ron_newman]

A special election occurs if the office-holder resigns more than a year before the next scheduled general city election. That would have been November 6. Denise resigned on October 31, so actually a few days before the "last day possible".

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

That's still pretty close to the last possible day, and if the rest of the story is true, is a bit enlightening. But then, is it really a shock to any of us that politicians are power-hungry and clique-ish? It's the nature of the beast.