Residents get 6 votes each in suburban NY election

AP ^ | 06/15/2010 | Jim Fitzgerald

[dalebert]

wasnt the original vote representative of the district?

[Red Badger]

wasnt the original vote representative of the district?

It was representative of those who bothered to show up to vote..............

[TLI]

Well now, six votes each. Isn’t that just a lovely pile of bu11shit.

The source?

[TexasFreeper2009]

I don’t get how this would change anything..

If everyone casts all 6 of their votes for their favorite candidate... then the results would turn out exactly the same.

[Pessimist]

Anybody read the article?

Whites get 6 votes too. Not just Hisopanics.

I guess the idea is that you essentially get fractional votes.

[FormerACLUmember]

Totalitarian fake voting.

We are now Cuba.

We are now North Korea.

[iowamark]

The idea is: If there are 5 majority group types and 1 or 2 minority type candidates running; the majority group voters will split their votes and the minority group voters will concentrate theirs, allowing a minority candidate to win.

[Uncle Miltie]

Correction:

"Furano cast multiple votes on the instructions of a federal judge and the U.S. Department of "Justice"

Gotta qualify "Justice" in quotes now, since one-man-six-votes is enforced by the 0bummer Administration.

[VRWCmember]

As an example, consider the following races for the six seats:

1. Wh1 vs Wh2 vs Wh3
2. Hi1 vs Wh4
3. Hi2 vs Hi3
4. Wh5 vs BL1
5. BL2 vs Hi4
6. BL3 vs BL4 vs Wh6

Every voter has 6 votes for the council which may be cast in any combination for the 6 seats. Assuming that some voters assign race as their primary consideration and then other factors after that, a significant number of Hispanic might ignore the races for seats 1, 4, and 6, and concentrate their votes on seats 2 and 5.

[Teacher317]

Cumulative Voting has been used in England and the US since the 19th Century. It is neither unConstitutional nor new. This is a journalist trying to get attention, and nothing more. Any decent reporter would note these facts. Instead, they want controversy and dischord. Let’s not give them their little manufactured drama.

[VRWCmember]

I don’t get how this would change anything..
If everyone casts all 6 of their votes for their favorite candidate... then the results would turn out exactly the same.

The 6 votes are for six different seats. If you cast all six votes for your favorite candidate, then you are voting all six votes for one seat. The other five seats will be determined COMPLETELY by others.

[RonF]

We used to have this in Illinois at the State level. It’s called cumulative voting. Each legislative district got 3 representatives in the General Assemblly. Each person got 3 votes. You could vote for 1, 2 or 3 candidates. If you voted for one they got 3 votes (a “bullet” vote), if you voted for 2 each got 1.5 votes and if you voted for 3 each got one vote.

What tended to happen is that in a district that was majority party A and minority party B, the majority would vote for 3 party A candidates and the minority would settle on one party B candidate and vote a bullet for him or her. So both the majority party and the minority party in the district got representation. I actually thought it worked out well, but our present governor started up his political career about 30 years ago agitating to get rid of the system.

[VRWCmember]

Here is a reference on CUMULATIVE VOTING

While this information was specifically about the cumulative voting in corporate shareholder votes for directors, a similar process CAN BE used for electing members of a city council, school board, etc.

I still think it is a STUPID way to elect government officials, but it is certainly within the prerogative of a local body to decide it will use such a process. (I don't like the fact that some judge would dictate to a locality that it must do so.)

[Buckeye McFrog]

sort of like that old underground blaksploitation flick Putney Swope (where Swope gets unanimously elected Chairman of the Board because none of the board members think any of the others would vote for him, so they all do)

[TexasFreeper2009]

I guess if all the “at large” seats were up for election simultaneously then this system could insure minority representation.

But it would do nothing if only one seat at a time came up for election.

This system could work to any minorities benefit... for instance a conservative could get elected in San Francisco using such a system. Even the most liberal parts of the country could be represented by a least some conservatives without having to gerrymander the districts.

[antiRepublicrat]

What I don’t see is how does this guarantee a Hispanic official?

It doesn't. But I think the judge is hoping that the whites will split their votes, while the Hispanics will rally behind one or two Hispanics. Funny, such thinking, because it assumes the Hispanics are just as racist as they claim the whites are.

[antiRepublicrat]

Okay, so what you are saying is that instead of getting 6 votes, dude got 1 vote that he could spread around.

Exactly. Let's say you have a candidate A who most people like somewhat, but they prefer another candidate B. In plurality voting B would get all the votes. In this voting B will still get enough votes to win, but A would finally get some votes, because people can partially vote for him too even though they never would have wasted their whole vote on him.

I still prefer instant runoff voting or some Condorcet method. In IRV you rank your favorite candidates, and multiple runoffs are held, eliminating the least-favored ones and assigning their votes on up, until a winner is reached. This type of voting eliminates the spoiler vote, "Don't vote for true conservative X because you'll make RINO candidate Y lose to the Democrat."

With IRV you can still vote for who you think is best without helping that Democrat win. This of course works exactly in reverse, so while Perot wouldn't have spoiled Bush, Nader also wouldn't have spoiled Gore.