Incumbent Cambridge city councilors Craig Kelley and Marc McGovern have been friends and mentors of mine for over a decade. I also feel they have some of the best ideas and policy experiences to continue to contribute to the Council, particular on issues regarding income insecurity, housing affordability, and smart growth approaches to transit and development.
Here is my full letter in the Cambridge Day.
I also urge a #1 vote for Patty Nolan for School Committee, another friend and mentor going back a decade.
It’s been an unusually contentious race this year as the multiple threads on BMG about controversial former candidate John Sanzone can attest to. It’s also been unnecessarily contentious in my view, as all the candidates have similar ends, but disagree on the means.
I have no animus towards the good people running on the CRA slate or Nadeem Mazen’s Slate against the Unity Slate of incumbents that include my two friends. I simply have a stronger relationship with them going back a decade and a continued admiration of their hard work and dedication to my home town.
For information on all the candidates, Robert Winters has run a great and (generally) impartial site regarding local government over at the Cambridge Civic Journal. In addition to candidate pages for all the candidates, it also includes a wealth of information regarding our unique PR system and election results and mathematical analysis going back to the first PR election in 1941.
sco says
A question occurred to me while driving around Cambridge, seeing the yard signs and learning more about these slates. How does the proportional representation voting come into play when you want to vote for a slate of candidates? If I wanted to follow your advice, would I vote for Kelley #1 and then McGovern for #2? Does it matter?
jconway says
I’ll differ to Robert Winters who has a good video on the subject for this years slates.
The shorter version is that you are voting for one councilor, one committe member, and assigning ranks of 1-9 or 1-6 for either body (you have to fill in that much but have the option of filling out further ranks). So in the event your first choice has already met quota the vote transfers to your second choice and so on, until all candidates have met quota.
The Nadeem slate and CRA slates have assigned their preferred rankings but the Unity Slate has not to my knowledge (it’s more of a shares funding slate than a traditional PR List). I would say whomever you like more should get #1 between these two, though for me it would be picking which political parent I like better. I’ll reveal Marc got my #1 the year he was a challenger, Kelley got it two years ago since he was the last to make the count the election prior. Neither will be getting it this year as I continue my Prairie State exile.
jas says
While Nolan is a great candidate for School Committee – the School Committee desperately needs new members in addition to Patty. Emily Dexter has been following and reporting on the school committee for years, has a strong grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of the system, closely followed the high price consultants and – importantly has reviewed the critical research on classroom sizes, # of adults in the class room.
Challenges are hard – support Emily with a #1 vote
A Cambridge resident, closely following this election as the parent of two young people who went recently went through the Cambridge Public school system
Pablo says
Nolan, Dexter, and Fantini are all long-time friends, and I hope they all get elected tomorrow. I know there are other good people on the ballot as well, so I am confident the folks in Cambridge will be well-represented by an excellent, thoughtful committee
Christopher says
In IRV if your first choice places last your vote gets moved to your second choice in the next round. What you’re describing sounds like if your first choice already has enough votes to win your vote counts for your second choice, but if that’s true how is it determined which ballots go to second choice? Also, what does PR mean in this context? That’s usually a term used in a parliamentary system with parties, but since MA municipal elections are non-partisan I don’t understand what aspect can be proportioned. Finally, what advantage is there to this over the simple top x vote-getters win where x is the number of seats available?
Pablo says
I have often wondered what would be the effect of running a campaign with a bunch of #2 signs.
A Cambridge voter really gets only one vote. Votes are sorted on the basis of number one votes, so if you got no #1 votes you would be eliminated in the first round as the candidate with the fewest votes. Thus, in order to make this strategy work, you need to get sufficient number 1 votes to survive the early counts where the lowest vote-getter is eliminated. As other candidates are eliminated, the count proceeds to assign the votes of a defeated candidate (or a candidate who exceeds quote) to the next candidate in ballot order, the number 2 vote. Thus if you have enough #1 votes to survive the early rounds, all the votes transferred in the counting process could move you way up in the rankings, eventually getting elected.
The thing I really don’t like about the process is that you might never know for whom your ballot was counted, and the order in which is was counted could determine the candidate it is credited to. This is the case for a candidate who has a whole bunch of #1 votes. (The quota is the number of valid ballots cast, divided by the number of positions to be elected, plus 1.) So, if quota is 2501, and a candidate has 3000 number 1 votes, 499 ballots will not count toward that candidate. The ballots beyond quota will go on to the number 2 candidate on the ballot, and so on, until the ballot is exhausted. If your ballot was among the first 2501 counted, your ballot goes to your first choice. If your ballot is later in the process, your vote moves down your list. When your vote is counted matters in the process, which adds an element of chance when electing the people who claim the last of the seats.
If your ballot gets bounced around between candidates, and runs out of choices before it ends up in someone’s pile, your ballot is exhausted and your vote doesn’t count. So, if your vote is bounced from your number one choice because they are over quota, and lands on your second choice, your ballot could be eliminated from the count if the second candidate is eliminated from the count and you don’t have a third choice marked on the ballot (or if your third choice has already been eliminated from the count). So if you want your ballot to count, make as many choices (in rank order) as possible so your ballot is not exhausted.
I think an easier and less random system would be to give people a fixed number of votes (say four for council and three for school committee) and let voters spread them out as they wish. They could give one candidate all of their votes, or spread them out in any order – perhaps a favorite candidate gets two votes, others get one.
In any case, as I find myself on the ballot in a neighboring community, all I have to do is ask folks to give me one of their votes. It’s much easier than devising a strategy to overcome the Cambridge PR system.
While we are on the topic, I would urge folks to give my friend Denise Simmons their number one vote. I have known her for more than 15 years, and she has been a tireless and smart elected official who deserves to be re-elected to the city council.
jconway says
Good explanation and I have proposed this reform myself
I guess there are implementation issues there with fractional voting, but it seems significantly simpler than PR and has the same result. Also, since all 9 councilors and 6 committee members are elected city wide, it makes sense that a voter should pick 9 councilors and 6 committee members.
I also think we should switch to a Plan B charter since we need a strong Mayor desperately in my view.
Also one of the 6’s is for Denise Simmons who is a tireless advocate for the LGBT community, people of color, seniors, and public housing tenants and is a civic institution with a lot of experience.
Pablo says
My little PR explanation was on the fly – I can do better. In fact, in a past life, I needed to because I was a community newspaper editor in Brooklyn, and the Community School Boards were elected by PR.
Denise is wonderful. She may be a “tireless advocate for the LGBT community, people of color, seniors, and public housing tenants and is a civic institution with a lot of experience,” but she also knows the nuts and bolts of local governance. She knows school funding formulas, zoning, traffic and parking, budgets, and is one of the smartest people I know. All that and social justice too!
Pablo says
Before the legislature was downsized in 1980, Illinois had a very interesting system for electing members of the State House of Representatives.
There were 59 legislative districts. Each district elected one senator and three members of the House of Representatives for a total of 177 representatives. This kind of arrangement is not unusual. In New Jersey there are 40 districts, and each district elects a senator and two members of the general assembly.
The unique feature in Illinois is that voters could distribute their three votes however they wished. You could give one candidate three votes. You could give two candidates 1.5 votes each. You could give three candidates one vote each. It gave the minority party in a district a chance at one seat; so if the Republicans in a heavily Democratic district nominate only one candidate, and urge folks to give that candidate all three votes, you could end up with two Democrats and one Republican from that district. (Reverse math also applied.)
jconway says
I guess it was a progressive reform passed by our future governor Pat Quinn back when he was a consumer advocate-but others have argued by fixing the size of the House and the voting to single districts it helped Madigan stay in power for three decades. I always thought Senate and house districts should be contiguous and I prefer numbering to the odd county system we have. Also I believe we used to have multi member districts in the MA House as well.
IL also uses to have one or two at large House seats which was a nice way to benefit Chicago at the expense of downstate. I believe it was constitutional to do so.
Christopher says
As for the House, we’ve used SMD as long as we’ve used a district system at all, but it used to be that each town sent a number of reps in proportion to their population. I suspect this is why there is still a one-year residency requirement for running for House in a given district, but not the Senate.
jconway says
Despite my support and that of esteemed BMG editor Bob Neer, Craig Kelley, Marc McGovern and Patty Nolan did exceedingly well winning on the first voter count. As did Pablo’s #1 for council Denise Simmons and Committee Fred Fantini.
Fun fact about Fred, he does zero advertising, not even signs, just door to door contact with his East Cambridge base and neighbors in ‘the Port’ (fka as Area IV). He was also the last Republican on either body in Cambridge, but quietly registered as an unenrolled in June, possibly since he’s always been pro-union and anti-nativist.
jas says
In addition to the door to door – In the 18 years my kids were in the Cam Public Schools Fred Fantini is at virtually every school event for the high school and ant many many events at the elementary and middle schools. You find him helping out at tables, giftwrapping and generally being a booster. So I suspect that most parents with kids in the school have meet him at least once in a supportive role without his having to come to their door.
Many of the other school committee members come to many such events – but not many with the fervor of Fred.
doubleman says
No doubt he’s crushed the retail politics game, but how is he on the issues. I admittedly did not follow the school committee closely (I don’t really know the issues well and don’t have kids, and don’t plan to in Cambridge – for reasons the city council race was more important).
I watched the returns (with Cambridge’s typical glacial pace) on CCTV. Fantini was interviewed and it was the first time I’ve seen anything from him, but I was struck by this 30+ year member of the school committee say “We have a good school district that is on the verge of being great.” What’s his approach and how well has he performed?