on 9/21/2000 1:35 PM, Russell Wayne Peterson at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Gerg,
>
> Do you favor proportional representation in any model? If you do, I'd like
> to hear more about how you might structure it.
>
> Russ Peterson
> Ward 9
> Standish Ericsson
Actually, I kind of like the idea of 5 wards with 3 council members per ward
-- one of the scenarios I discussed which would likely be constitutional.
With proportional representation, I suspect such a system would produce a
council with 10 DFL'rs and 5 non-DFL'rs.
The problem I see with "classic" proportional representation is that
Americans like to vote for actual people, and not just for a political party
label. In the current anti-partisan politics environment, anything that
increases partisanship is likely to be rejected by the public.
I think that some version of instant run-off might preserve the ability to
vote for individuals and still allow proportional representation. IIRC the
city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a version of this, the details of
which escape me.
Perhaps one of the advocates of Proportional Representation on the list can
identify how to structure a system to vote for individuals and not party
lists.
But if it preserved the ability to vote for a person (not a party label),
and was structured properly, I could easily support some form of
proportional representation for the city of Minneapolis.
Greg
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Sent from the computer of:
Greg Abbott [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linden Hills
13th Ward (612) 925-0630
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