The local chapter of the NAACP is beginning a petition drive to change Cincinnati City Council elections to a proportional representation system.
The organization, in a news release, said it hopes to collect 6,100 signatures within the next 30 days to place the issue on the ballot for the November election.
In proportional representation, voters rank all the candidates, with the first choice receiving more weight than the second, and so on. That would replace the traditional winner-take-all system, in which voters pick specific candidates for whom to vote.
Cincinnati was one of the system's pioneers when it introduced proportional representation in 1925 to get rid of the "Boss Cox" political machine. The system was rescinded in 1957, and several attempts to re-introduce it have failed over the years.
Election Day '09 was a roller-coaster for election reformers. Instant runoff voting had a great night in Minnesota, where St. Paul voters chose to implement IRV for its city elections, and Minneapolis voters used IRV for the first time—with local media touting it as a big success. As the Star-Tribune noted in endorsing IRV for St. Paul, Tuesday’s elections give the Twin Cities a chance to show the whole state of Minnesota the benefits of adopting IRV. There were disappointments in Lowell and Pierce County too, but high-profile multi-candidate races in New Jersey and New York keep policymakers focused on ways to reform elections; the Baltimore Sun and Miami Herald were among many newspapers publishing commentary from FairVote board member and former presidential candidate John Anderson on how IRV can mitigate the problems of plurality elections.