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Choice Voting in
Cambridge, MA
June 2004
Introduction
To elect its 9-member City Council and 6-member School Committee,
Cambridge, Massachusetts uses choice voting, also known as STV, the single
transferable vote. This
voting system is a non-winner-takes-all method of full representation. Cambridge holds the
distinction of being the only jurisdiction in the United States that still uses
a choice voting system. Choice voting in Cambridge has survived legal
challenges, most recently in 1996. The Supreme Court of Massachusetts deemed
choice voting to be constitutionally valid. There have also been 5 failed
referenda to repeal choice voting.
Cambridge, MA adopted proportional voting in 1941, in an effort to increase
African-American representation in local government. Since its
inception, the African American community of Cambridge have been able to elect
representatives to both bodies in almost every election in the 1960’Äôs and
1970’Äôs ’Äì with between 5-10% of the total population.
Elements of Choice Voting
In a choice system, the voter ranks the candidates in their order of
preference. Voters simply rank candidates in order of preference,
putting a "1" by their first choice, a "2" by their second
choice and so on. Voters can rank as few or as many candidates as they wish,
knowing that a lower choice will never count against the chances of a higher
choice.
To determine winners, the number of votes necessary for a candidate to earn
office is established based on a formula using the numbers of seats and
ballots: one more than 1/(# of seats + 1). This amount is termed the
threshold of votes necessary for election.
Benefits of Choice Voting in Cambridge
The use of choice voting in Cambridge, MA has enabled minorities to better succeed in
local elections by lowering the
threshold for election. Choice voting only requires that a minority
population is at least 10% of the total population in order to guarantee a
City Council seat or 14% for a school committee seat. Under a typical
winner-take-all system, a 51% white-majority can dominate all nine seats of
the council or all six seats of the committee.
Since 1980, when the African-American population crossed 10% of the
population, the amount needed to guarantee a council representative, members
of the African-American community have been consistently elected to the city
council and school committee. Also, as a result of choice voting and its
promotion of coalition-building, although only 10% of the population, in
recent years African-Americans have been able to hold more than one seat on
each board at time.
The implementation of choice voting has also allowed women to achieve much
greater representation in Cambridge than in other methods of election. Between
1997 and 2001, the City Council and School Committee had female representation
between 1/3 and 2/3 of each body.
Contrary to what some critics speculate, choice voting is not too complicated
for voters. In Cambridge, the elections have an average of 2% error
rate. This figure includes both incorrectly marked ballots and blank
ballots where the voter may have only participated in a higher level
election. In the future, to further reduce this error rate, Cambridge
could allow error correction for the voters.
Other information on choice voting in Cambridge:
Sample ballots from the Cambridge school
board and city
council elections. The
history
of Cambridge elections including
election results, ballot analysis, and campaign finance information
Issues
facing Cambridge and proportional representation
A further analysis of race
in the Cambridge elections using choice voting
Exploration of PR-STV on the City
of Cambridge website
An article comparing
preference voting to cumulative voting
An article highlighting
the benefits of choice voting in Cambridge, Mass., featuring
CVD's general counsel, Dan Johnson-Weinberger.
General commentary and other information on proportional voting: Comparison of
proportional voting to other voting methods Introduction
to choice voting, or PR-STV Strengths
of choice voting Model
of an election using choice voting Summaries
of 1993 PR Elections |
