“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.
Category: proportional representation
Posts related to proportional representation (PR), mostly in the United States.
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.
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:
PR graphic for public use
Some have asked me to share a chart I made of PR’s history in American cities. Here it is.
Dynamics of voting-system change in America, part 1
The United States is unique among democracies for the durability of its two-party system. Why in this context does electoral “reform” ever succeed?