still undecided with only a few hours before polls close

[totient]

The Progressive Democrats of Somerville have endorsed only two candidates for Alderman at large: Bill White and Fred Berman. I agree with them, and generally think it'd be nice if Bruce Desmond were not reelected. But I'm not at all convinced that voting for, say, Dennis Sullivan and Tony LaFuente is the right move, for all that Dennis appears to be a reasonable enough guy and Tony seems to have gotten with the progressive program since his last run for office four years ago. Bruce is likely to win election anyway and this year I'm more concerned about electing Fred than I am about defeating Bruce.

Comments

[scooterbird.livejournal.com]

Is this for a primary or a general election? And are the candidates running in a non-partisan race? I'm curious about the Progressive Democrats and their independence.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

General election.

The candidates are running in a non-partisan race, four chosen out of six.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

This being Massachusetts, the assumption is that most folks are Democrats. We found out recently that Bill White was actually a Republican, but that hasn't stopped the PDS from endorsing him -- he's pretty awesome on the issues, at least at the city level.

[ron_newman]

Bill White changed his registration to Democrat last year.

[cos]

... though I think PDS also endorsed him for alderman at-large in 2005 (and 2003?), before he changed registration.

As a PDS participant, my impression is that the main reason we like Bill White is that he actually wants people outside of city government to know what's happening in city government.

[ron_newman]

In 2003, I think a majority of PDS voted to support Bill White, but not the (then) 80% required for an endorsement. Same thing happened to Lafuente when he ran for mayor that year.

[ceo]

I'd also like to see Connolly defeated, after the nasty campaign he ran against Marty Martinez in the special election for Denise Provost's seat last year. But I voted for Berman and White because I'd like to see them (especially Berman) elected.

Rick Scirocco's signs are still all over that falling-down old shack in Ball Square he had for a campaign headquarters. Glad we didn't elect a mayor who can't even clean up his own mess.

[cos]

Depending on how you look at it, your votes for at-large count more if you vote for fewer candidate, because you're contributing more towards those specific candidate's margins, rather than raising the general "water level" for more candidates. Based on what you say, vote for just Berman and White and you'll contribute more towards your goals than if you vote for more candidates.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

The problem is that that contributes to the goal of electing Berman and reelecting White, but does not contribute to the goal of not electing
Desmond or Connolly. It leaves out any opinion on which of the remaining 4 should get the remaining 2 slots.

Sadly, with 4 votes that count the same, that seems like the best you can actually do.

[scooterbird.livejournal.com]

Has anyone brought up the option of the Single Transferable Vote, or a similar ranked-choice method? There is another municipality in Massachusetts - I believe it's Cambridge - which elects its officials in such a fashion.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Cambridge's election results depend on the order in which the ballots are counted. This seems like a poor feature of an electoral system.

[scooterbird.livejournal.com]

I looked it up, and that's true, to an extent. Not all STV implementations are like that; here's a paper on the subject.

And obviously, there are features of the current plurality-based system which are problematic. I would argue that they are worse - which would probably be the subject of another post.