The Next Mayor (the guy not the project) - choice of over 10% of Philadelphians! (The Next Mayor)

YPP contributor Aardhart brought up a point that's been bugging me for a while:

I am dreading the prospect that the next mayor of Philadelphia will have 65% of the people vote against him in the primary.

If you think about it, it may be even worse. Assuming a similar number for turnout as we saw in 1999 (approximately 290,000 registered Dems), and a roughly even split that sees a winner with about 25% of the vote, that works out to about 72,500 votes. That's about 5% of the total population of the city. If you take out those under 18 (simply because the government has determined that they have no say) and assume that those who don't bother to register, don't deserve to have a say, we're still talking about 7% of registered voters determining the outcome. Even with more generous estimates of turn-out and the winner's share of the vote, we're still only talking about 10 to 15 percent of registered voters.

His post mentions two ideas, non-partisan elections and Instant Run-off voting, that could be used to ensure that the winner of the election is truly the choice of a majority of the people - or at least the eventual choice of a majority of the people. If anyone doubts that Instant Run-off Voting could work in a large city, check out this.

(edited to add:To make it clear, while I've been coming around on Instant Run-off Voting, I think that a non-partisan, everyone included, primary in May that would result in the top two facing off in November, would be best.)

Comments (2)

Dave

Thanks for bringing this up. We sort of covered these alternate voting systems in a math class I took in college (it was probably the best part of a very uninteresting class).

What about combining those systems, and having ranked-choice, followed by a run-off?

Actually, although I like ranked-choice, I agree that non-partisan would probably be best, if only because it's probably easier for the average Joe to understand.

Posted by Dave | February 15, 2007 4:02 PM

Good point. I do often find myself ranking the candidates, and have heard (or read) a few other people's "rankings" of the candidates. You might be onto something.

Posted by Dave | February 15, 2007 9:19 PM

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