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“And they ate”

I write to amplify Alderman Farrell. In a lame-duck session of the outgoing Board of Aldermen, “Happy” moved that the following poem appear in the minutes.

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Example STV ballots

What did ballots look like in American single transferable vote elections? I can’t find examples, so I am licensing these photos for public use. The ballots are from Worcester, Massachusetts, which held six PR elections, 1949-59. Please tell me if you know of PR ballots from other cities.

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Painful vote counts under RCV?

One possible bug in ranked-choice voting is the duration of a vote count. This is especially true in the proportional representation (PR) form, since ballots may move around a lot more than in “instant-runoff voting.” Many used to suggest that painful vote counts were a cause of PR’s repeal. This claim resurfaced yesterday in a private exchange about Al Southwick’s piece on PR in Worcester, Mass. Southwick writes:

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