3 ms·
No other New Yorkers here to comment? If this were in place in 2013, it may have flipped the mayoral primary to Thompson, since he and Quinn combined had more
by bbanyc 7y ago
No other New Yorkers here to comment?
If this were in place in 2013, it may have flipped the mayoral primary to Thompson, since he and Quinn combined had more votes than de Blasio, and both were more aligned with the centrist "machine" faction than de Blasio was.
There was also some form of proportional voting in place in the '30s and '40s when LaGuardia was mayor. It greatly weakened the Tammany Hall machine and brought independent voices into the city council for the first time. Then the Communist Party won a couple of council seats. Aghast, the majority quickly amended the charter to go back to FPTP in single member districts...and Tammany sprang back into dominance.
Many American cities had similar experiments with PR around the same time, and most of them "failed" for similar reasons, so for a time the only place in America with proportional representation was Cambridge, Mass., where of course the Communists would win a majority on the council regardless of what voting system they used. :P
- lambertsimnel 7y agoI'm not a New Yorker, but I am interested in learning more about the history of proportional voting there. This FairVote page answered some of my questions, but I have more: https://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_representation_in_the_united_states https://www.fairvote.org/a_brief_history_of_proportional_rep... Was PR only used at city council level? Was the only PR system used STV, or were others also tried? Were other forms of ranked choice voting used? You mentioned Mayor LaGuardia. What system was he elected under as mayor? I found this 1941 mayoral election results page, which mysteriously mentions "Fusion Votes": https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=79425 https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=79425
- bbanyc 7y agoI think it was just for the council, and mayoral races were always FPTP. Fusion voting is the odd practice in New York State of allowing one party to endorse another party's candidate. For instance, in last year's election for governor, Cuomo ran on the Democratic, Working Families, Independence, and Women's Equality Party lines, while Molinaro was the Republican, Conservative, and Reform Party candidate. https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2018/general/2018Governor.pdf https://www.elections.ny.gov/NYSBOE/elections/2018/general/2...