by Jack Santucci
Posts related to proportional representation (PR), mostly in the United States.
I have a new essay with John Ketcham, “Reforming Big-City Elections.” In it, we argue that the two-party system makes its own case for party-list-based forms of proportional representation. Our argument differs from the usual one based on Duverger’s law.
Read more…Students in one of my courses this semester will be listening to a 1947 WNYC radio broadcast on the repeal of the single transferable vote (STV) in New York City. I need to look back at the associated assignment, but part of it asks them to think about the sorts of arguments used in such campaigns.
The broadcast features a debate between George Hallett of the National Municipal League and state senator Abraham Kaplan (D), incidentally defeated on transfers for a city council seat in one of the final STV elections (possibly 1945).
Moderating the debate is Joseph Kitchin, listed by WNYC as a Professor of Political Science at Queens College. WNYC also refers to him as “Kitchen,” but this college bulletin (1947-8) refers to him as “Kitchin” instead and of Assistant Professor rank with a UMich Ph.D.
Does anyone know what came of Kitchin? I searched Google Scholar for him about a year ago, and I don’t recall much coming up. (Going back reveals a 1942 publication in international relations, possibly his dissertation.) I also looked for records of him during my stint at QC, and the archivist could find nothing — maybe because we were looking for “Kitchen” instead.
Having spent time with data on the use of proportional ranked-choice voting in New York City, I read a recent commentary in Jacobin with some surprise. This piece asserts that the system “boosted”…
— Read on medium.com/3streams/proportional-representation-in-new-york-city-did-not-boost-the-left-7369d94f484b
Rose City Reform unpacks Portland’s 2024 election with Jack Santucci, who wrote a book about the history of Portland’s new voting method.
— Read on rosecityreform.substack.com/p/what-could-we-possibly-learn-from
An emerging narrative holds that ranked-choice voting is in trouble as a cause due to its performance at this year’s general election. It therefore might be useful to look at historical data on the incidence and potential consequences of ‘bad years.’ I don’t see much evidence for the effect of a ‘bad year’ — at least from the perspective of failed adoption.
The data cover efforts to adopt the single transferable vote (STV), in almost all cases alongside the council-manager form of government.1 Close readers will note that this is not the same as what lost earlier this month: instant runoff voting with jungle primaries. I do not have the kind of data you see above for “single-winner” adoptions (i.e., instant runoff), at either the state or local levels. What I can say is:
The data show a string of bad years in the late 1930s. They clearly did not end adoptions; more than half of winning referendums came after. Also, these ‘bad’ years followed a few in which STV did very well.3
