Preliminary election results

[elements.livejournal.com]

Via the Somerville Journal and Somerville News, results of the preliminary election today:

Mayor: Joe Curtatone and Suzanne Bremer (with Rick Scirocco eliminated)

Ward 6 alderman: Rebekah Gewirtz and Charlie Chisholm (with Robert Adams eliminated)

Also, the Somerville News says turnout was higher than expected, which is always nice. The Journal hasBoth websites have a bunch of pictures of the scene at various polling places.

Comments

Was that really necessary?

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

Can we finally get rid of these silly preliminary elections? The mayor got 78% of votes cast for the three candidates and Mr. Adams received a whopping total of 47 votes in Ward 6. Surely the city of Somerville can figure out how to deal with these races in a single round, saving us tens of thousands of dollars. There are many options and it's just not that complicated. Please people...

Re: Was that really necessary?

[elements.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I prefer the Condorcet Method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method) to standard instant runoff voting but yes. There's gotta be a better way!

Re: Was that really necessary?

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a fair method, but good freaking luck explaining it to the pols, let alone the voting public. No wonder no one uses it in real life (i.e. public elections).

Re: Was that really necessary?

[cos]

Condorcet voting methods fail the most basic requirement of any voting system: clarity. Voters need to understand how they should vote in order to promote the result they want to promote. Condorcet voting attempts to solve problems with IRV/preference voting that are theoretical, and would hardly ever show up in real elections. That's a very bad tradeoff.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[turil.livejournal.com]

What if you gave the voter a pile of coins or some other physical object and had a jar for every candidate? The voter could put as many of their coins into whichever jars they wanted, in whatever proportion they liked. I've seen this done at political event tables where they were trying to gauge what people's most important issues were. It's a simple way to do proportional voting. And it's kind of fun too, compared to filling out ovals, drawing lines, or using a computer.

And then, what if we used those results for proportional representation, as well...

Re: Was that really necessary?

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You want to have a paper trail.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[cos]

I haven't thought about that one as much, because I haven't seen anyone propose a system of doing it in a simple, practical, verifiable manner. It may be possible, and if so, would be interesting to think about. I worry about some problems with it. One nice feature of using unweighted preference voting (aka IRV) for proportional is that each person's vote still counts for just one candidate, with the same weight as anyone else's vote.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Surely the city of Somerville can figure out how to deal with these races in a single round, saving us tens of thousands of dollars.

Not only that, after all the elections we've had in the last year or so, I think there's a high risk of election fatigue. I mean, I've voted in all of them, but how many people got sick of it and didn't bother?

Re: Was that really necessary?

[elements.livejournal.com]

I have a competition of sorts with on_reserve to see which of us is the biggest supervoter nerd. But it does get tiresome with one practically every other week. It's also confusing - I know someone who thought Marty Martinez had already won the main election and didn't remember to vote again in May, and I imagine that sort of thing happens a lot.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[ron_newman]

If you lived in Ward 1 precinct 1 or Ward 2 precinct 1, you'd have yet another special election to deal with on October 9: Anthony Galluccio vs. Write-in Blank Space!

We've had an awful lot of state special elections this year.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[ron_newman]

Did Bob Adams campaign at all? Anywhere?

Re: Was that really necessary?

[elements.livejournal.com]

I got one flier of his in my door. I also got one of Chisholm's; a friend one street over says he got 4 from Chisholm.

I stood out at my polling place (acros the street from Ciampa Manor) and there were several of us for Rebekah, one guy for Chisholm, and several for Joe. From what I could see of the United Methodist Church polling place it was the same. Nobody for Adams, Scirocco or Bremer.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[ron_newman]

I got Rebekah's flyer only because I was the one handing them out in my building. I got one flyer from Chisholm, which didn't say much. I never got anything from Adams.

I stood at my polling place, the Dilboy Post VFW, from 7 to 9 am. Pretty much the same as what you reported, except there were two people for Chisholm.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[ron_newman]

Four years ago, we also had a three-candidate preliminary election for Mayor. In that one, all three candidates received votes in the same order of magnitude, but the incumbent (Dorothy Kelly Gay) finished third and was thus eliminated. If we had not had a preliminary election, things might have turned out differently.

There's no real way for the city to say, "there's one strong candidate and two very weak ones, so let's not bother with a preliminary".

Re: Was that really necessary?

[elements.livejournal.com]

I don't think people want there to not be a process of elimination. We just want it to be one actual election day, rather than two.

It might be interesting to say, as an alternative, "If one candidate wins such a large plurality - say, 2/3 of the votes - there will be no need for a further election." But that might be as complex and problematic to implement as honest to gosh instant runoff or Codorcet voting as it is.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

Yes. I don't think that people are generally in favor of first-past-the-post voting, i.e. whoever gets the largest plurality wins outright. That's more or less what happened when Capuano won the primary a few years ago, right? In any case, there are lots of voting systems which can do the elimination with a single election day. Which one to use is an interesting debate.

From the wikipedia entry, Condorcet appears mathematically sound and politically impractical; it's good for geeks but not for the public.

Perhaps instant runoff voting, while somewhat less fair in theory, would be easy enough to implement and explain to voters.

Perhaps everyone should be on the ballot in November and, if no one gets >50% of the vote in a given race, we could vote again a month later.

And so on. There are lots of options which would be cheaper and perhaps more fair than the current system. Sheesh, even I could get 47 votes, or maybe not...

[kissoflife.livejournal.com]

I found the "Vote Scirocco" babe with the bullhorn hanging out of the limo rather annoying. No pluses for Scirocco there.

[elements.livejournal.com]

There wasn't much to give him pluses. Unwieldy answers to questions on the issues, history of women taking out restraining orders against him, etc. I met him several times during the campaign and found him very nice and polite, but in a salesmany way. Given his history I'm thankful he's not very politically savvy.

[ron_newman]

A 'babe' who hasn't yet found the need to seek a restraining order against him, I guess....

[reverend-jim.livejournal.com]

Coming home from voting, I witnessed the Scirocco SUV (also rocking a bullhorn earlier) make a left turn *through the red light* at Central & Summer. Cutting off the oncoming traffic that had the green. WTF is that about? If I'd been the first car, instead of stuck behind a goddamned 15-mile-per-hour tard, I would have full-on creamed that shiny new truck and hoped for a good whiplash suit.

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

What was really annoying was Fred Berman standing within three feet of the exit to my polling place and accosting voters on their way out. It's legal since he wasn't on the ballot, but it's a great way to alienate voters. Way to go Fred.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

He ambushed me as I was getting out of my car when I got home. My cat was loudly meowing the whole time (he wanted to go in) and I had shopping bags in both hands. He may be well intentioned, but he's bad at reading other people. Or he just doesn't care. Either way, what you're saying doesn't surprise me.

Having said that, I had a good time: he didn't realize his questionnaire answers made him the candidate who hates dogs, and he didn't mention his MVTF association until I brought it up.

[ron_newman]

Hates dogs?

[ron_newman]

The law definitely prohibits electioneering within N feet of the polls for candidates who are on the day's ballot.

But I'm not sure whether it prohibits campaigning by candidates who are NOT on the day's ballot, or whether it prohibits circulation of petitions. Anyone know for sure?

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

I think it's 150 feet. Anyway, we talked to both Rebekah and to one of the elections commissioners (Anthony Alibrandi?) who happened to be standing near by. They both said that there was nothing to be done about it since he's not on the ballot. The elections commissioner didn't like it at all because it confuses the police who are used to enforcing the 150 feet rule. There was also someone with a petition to "draft Gore" to run for president standing at the poll exit. Only slightly less annoying.