Boston Faces an Unnecessary Costly Election
Conducting a citywide election costs $500,000 to $750,000, according to election officials. About 340,000 ballots would have to be printed, at about 20 cents each, and detail police officers and poll workers would have to staff all 254 precincts.So what is the obvious solution? Change the law. One needs to only look across the Charles River at Boston's close neighboring city of Cambridge in order to find a voting system that not only requires no expensive primary elections, but results in a Council that is more democratic and more representative of its electorate, the people of Boston. Cambridge has been using the choice voting system (also known as the "single transferable vote" or "preference voting" in some locations) ever since it was adopted by the city in 1941."The law requires us to do it," said Geraldine Cuddyer, Boston's election commissioner. "So we'll just have to do it."
Under choice voting, voters are able to maximize the effectiveness of their votes by ranking candidates in order of preference. It ensures that as many people as possible end up casting their vote for a winning candidate, but never for a candidate they could not support, as the voter is not required to rank all of the candidates on the ballot. Choice voting also allows a group of like-minded voters to win their fair and representative share of seats.
In Boston's case, choice voting would help in that it eliminates the need for runoff or primary elections, as the field of Council seat hopefuls would be narrowed automatically through the vote-counting process. Once a candidate reaches the threshold of votes necessary to win, his or her surplus votes are transferred to the remaining candidates. In the most precise and fair method of choice voting, all of the winning candidate's ballots would be transferred at an equally reduced rate. As candidates are eliminated, their ballots are transferred to the other candidates according to the voters' expressed preferences. This preference transfer effectively eliminates the spoiler problem.
Under the current system, however, some in Boston are saying one candidate should voluntarily drop out of the race:
Political observers point to four long-shot candidates, saying one of them should drop out to save the city the expense. But those candidates, who submitted the 500 signatures necessary to appear on the ballot, say they are exercising their democratic right to run for office and have no intention of dropping out by tomorrow's 5 p.m. deadline.Choice voting would allow everyone to be satisfied. The city would have up to an extra $750,000 it didn't have to spend, all the candidates would be able to exercise their rights, and the people would be given more of a choice in who will end up as their representative on the Boston City Council."I've been trying for 10 years to get on the ballot," said David James Wyatt, a 53-year-old Roxbury resident who since 1997 has tried to run for mayor and City Council but until this year had never cleared the signature threshold. "I'm not going to pull out now."
Comment on Boston Faces an Unnecessary Costly Election
Current Discussion
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Posted by Marty Hogan, 2007-08-09 11:33:19 (5 years ago)
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The Boston City Council and MA House of Reps are apparently agreeing that changing the law is the obvious solution -- only they're not changing the law to a more democratic way of conducting an election, they're changing the law to eliminate conducting an election altogether. The City Council passed a home rule petition seeking to put all nine at-large candidates on November's ballot and eliminate September's preliminary entirely. The petition has already passed through the House, and with Secretary of the Commonewealth Bill Galvin (who has ostensibly taken over the Elections Department in Boston) referring to the prelim as "wasteful," why wouldn't they? Problem is, while this may very well be perfectly legal, an elected body changing election rules while the affected election cycle is already underway just plain smells bad. And you'd think, what with the lawsuits, DOJ and takeover of the election department and all, that Boston officials would be a bit more interested in redeeming voter confidence. Remember when all those precincts ran out of ballots last year? The city had been trying to save money then, too, so didn't distribute them all at the outset. The cost of the prelim is a red herring -- the city has budgeted $928K for both the elections that will occur this year -- so how could the city be expecting to shell out $750K, or even $500K for the prelim? And $500K is something like .025% of the city's $2B budget. I wonder if this doesn't have more to do with protecting the campaign funds of incumbents and undermining challengers' using the prelim as an organizing and fundraising tool? I wonder more why I haven't read about this in the papers, and why no one else seems upset about this?
Posted by Francesca F., 2007-07-19 16:31:08 (5 years ago)
I feel that the question is weather we change the law when and where we feel there is anytype of problem, or do we act in a democratic way and weigh out the options and have the vote in the Mass Legislature to affect future election. I just see this as an opportunity for a sitting at large councilor to save his seat and steal some of the limelight while he is at it. The fact is that the primary still needs to be had in certain distrists throughout the city. Also the amount of money that is devoted to the primary in the city budget is only 325,000.00 as opposed to the 759,000.00 that the newspaper and your blog have eroniously reported. I feel that the people of this city want change and new leadership, and I believe it is the incumbants that are most afraid of the primary and the system as it is. So I ask all of the readers of this blog and everyother resident of the city to stand up and strike a blow for change in our elected council. Please look at my web site(www.votemartyhogan.info) and seriously consider me one of your four At-Large votes and we will make a change for a better Boston. Thank you, Marty Hogan Candidate for Boston City Council At-Large marty@votemartyhogan.info