At 08:20 PM 9/20/2000 -0500, Dave Stack wrote:
>> From: Cameron A. Gordon >
>
>>> ... City Council will still be made up of 13 Council Members but only
>six will come from wards ... The other seven 'at large' council members
>will be elected from among independents and party lists by all the voters in
>the city. ... each voter will have two votes, the first for the ward
>council member, the second for one of the lists of up to 7 city-wide 'at
>large' members. ... A party's (or list's) number of council members will
>be determined by its share of the total vote. One thirteenth, or
>approximately 7.7 %, of the vote will be enough to elect one candidate. If
>a party receives 16% of the vote, they win 16% (or 2) of the seats on the
>council. If the receive 56% vote they win 56% of the seats. ... >>
>
>
>However, Cameron, or anyone, please tell me why I am confused by the
>percentage vote point in the above description of proportional election of
>the City Council. I am thinking that if only 7 members are elected
>proportionally, then wouldn't it take one-seventh of the at-large votes, or
>14.3%, to elect one member?
I can answer that - partly, as I understand it. (I was a supporter of
this charter amendment.)
The vote totals include the single-member districts. So if there were
3 parties (DFL, Republican, Independence) in the Ward 1 race, and it
came out 45% DFL, 15% Republican, and 40% Independence. The DFLer
would win - but these vote totals would be figured in to the overall
proportional representation scheme. If DFLers won all 6 wards in this
fashion, they'd get relatively few of the at-large seats.
So that's how I understood it - but now I realize I must have been
confused. Since each ward race is only voted on by 1/6 of the voters,
the vote total for all ward races is equal to the total number of
voters. But the vote total for the at-large seats is (presumably)
7 times this amount - don't we all vote on all the at-large races?
So the total number of votes would be 8 times the number of voters,
and 1/8 of the vote would be required to elect a party's representative.
Perhaps Cam can clear this up. But in any event, if we can agree in
principle that proportional representation (in some form) is more
desirable than strict geographical representation (as we have now),
the details can be worked out.
And I should hope instant runoff for races like mayor would be a
no-brainer. (I'd be interested to hear any objections.)
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Steven C. Anderson Longfellow area of Minneapolis
http://www.SteveAnderson.org
