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

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.

Sure

[turil.livejournal.com]

That could be done, too.

Actually, I didn't really mean to imply that there would really be jars. I meant that it would be explained in that way, and people would still fill out paper ballots or some other way of making a recording of the vote.

Hey, we could just take pictures of the jars after people voted. And then empty the jar into a bigger jar after each person voted. The photo would be the paper trail, and you could still have satisfaction of the tactile and visual elements of the jar idea.

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?

[turil.livejournal.com]

The frustrating thing I find with each person's vote only counting for one candidate is that it's very black and white, which isn't a realistic way of thinking about the world, or complex humans. What if I like half of the policies and tactics of one candidate, and half of the policies and tactics of another candidate?

Re: Sure

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

You select the lesser of two evils. Ultimately, the result is black and white: you can't elect half of one person and half of another.

Re: Sure

[turil.livejournal.com]

"you can't elect half of one person and half of another."

Not with our current highest level of government in the US. But with some other forms of government, you can do that. Boards of Directors are kind of like that. The members of an organization vote for several candidates, based on their skills and interests and how well they represent the interests of the members, and then once the most favored candidates get elected onto the board, they often naturally fall into a position where they are best suited according to their skills and interests.

I believe that the Cambridge City Council works that way too.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[cos]

That's entirely irrelevant. Either people must compromise on a candidate and get that candidate elected, or candidates must compromise with each other. In practice, you get some of both. You can't elect a hybrid candidate, and you can't have any political power without organizing for actual, real, human candidates. Even though none of them will ever match what you want perfectly. No voting system is ever going to change that.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Why can't I elect more than one candidate? What if, instead of being crazy obsessed with fractions of percentage points difference in elections ("winning" with a mere 50.5 percent of a vote, a failing grade by any standard, for example) we either told every candidate who doesn't get a healthy majority (at least a passing grade of a C - 70%) to try again, or give up? Or what if we made it so that everyone who got at least 30% or so (a healthy minority) got to be elected and share the job?

Less stuff might be accomplished, but the stuff that was accomplished would be far more collaborative and representative of all, rather than a small majority "winning" and everyone else losing out.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[cos]

Huh? So we would get two or three Governors? Or, even though Somerville is supposed to have one alderman per ward plus 4 at-large, one ward might get 4 aldermen and another get 3 while most wards get 1 each? Or perhaps some congressional districts should get multiple Representatives? With fractional votes? I think that'd be a mess in general, distortive in many cases, and impossible in some. No thanks.

As for requiring a supermajority to get elected, that's a different matter, and entirely orthogonal to the discussion we were having.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[turil.livejournal.com]

There is only one Mayor of Cambridge, right? But many people are elected to serve on the City Council, and one of those elected individuals is the one who gets to be the Mayor, right?

That's how a Board of Directors works. And it's how (sort of) at least some city commissions work.

The people sort themselves out into the roles that they are good for and are interested in. And that makes for a more effective group, from my experience.

Re: Was that really necessary?

[cos]

You keep veering off in different directions, so that I don't really get what you're trying to say anymore. Cambridge uses proportional representation with preference voting. One of the nice features of that system, as I stated above, is that each person's vote counts for a single candidate, the same as anyone else's vote.