Politics
Standard voting creates strategic quandary for at-large race
I'd love to see Sekou Biddle, Patrick Mara, and Bryan Weaver all get seats on the DC Council. All three are smart and have generally good policy ideas. I'd vote for any of the three over at least half of the incumbents.
Photo by luisgomezphotos on Flickr.
Unfortunately, only one can win on April 26. Or, very possibly, none of these will. For the many residents who'd prefer one of several candidates over Vincent Orange, this election is going to either force some deep strategic voting, or result in a winner who's low on the ranked list for many voters.
Biddle was endorsed by 8 members of the DC Council, environmental and progressive groups, and a few of the better unions. Orange has most of the unions including the teachers. Weaver is strong in youth groups and students, and Mara has the police, the Washington Post and, of course, the DC GOP.
Biddle (chat transcript) has a great grasp of policy and it's probably unfair that he's been tarnished by his association with Kwame Brown. He got pigeonholed as the insider candidate, but if elected to the Council he would have his own ideas. He understands urbanism and often rides the bus or his bicycle, and knows better than most how to fix education and would make an ideal chair for an education committee.
Mara (chat transcript) has been absolutely clear on his beliefs from the start, which is commendable. I strongly agree with some of them, like transit and bicycling, and disagree with others, like taxes. He would absolutely push against corruption in the Council and the DC government, as David Catania does. As for being a Republican, if he simply pretended to be an independent or Democrat, as so many do, he wouldn't seem out of place at all; since both oppose a tax increase, there aren't really many policy differences between Mara and Biddle, for instance.
Weaver (chat transcript) gets relatively little attention because most of the press thinks he's probably not going to win, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's too bad. He had by far the most insightful answers to questions on our chat and masterfully analyzes and describes issues around youth, crime, gentrification and much more. He also has the best video ads. If he doesn't win I hope he'll write lots more articles for Greater Greater Washington and other outlets conveying his wisdom. And he's for the tax increase, which the Post hates but I think it the right policy.
Orange (chat transcript) doesn't seem to stand for much. He's aggressively pushed big box development but insists he's a big supporter of local retail corridors. He said he's for increasing the height limit but has given strong support to groups neighbors fighting any growth at campuses. He was against marriage equality before he was for it. He won't support a tax increase in the budget, but he hasn't endorsed any cuts.
Basically, Orange has avoided explaining how he would make any tradeoffs at all, which has made it hard for anyone to concretely explain why they oppose him but isn't a good sign that he'd be a principled councilmember. Many of his colleagues have slipped out of some of the same policy tradeoffs; several oppose taxes but haven't detailed cuts to compensate, and most were somewhat equivocal on campus plans. Orange, though, has tried to play both sides of virtually every issue much more than any of the others.
Lopez (chat transcript) has a lot of promise, which is what everyone says. He needs more experience with the issues before being on the Council, but this race is only the beginning for Lopez.
Alan Page, Dorothy Douglas, Tom Brown and Arkan Haile don't deserve to be totally ignored, but that's what's happening nonetheless.
Whom to vote for? A recent poll showed Orange with strong leads among registered voters, though in a special election most registered voters don't vote. Whoever can turn out the biggest base will win, and it's not clear who that could be. Orange is already busing seniors to early voting, so he's a strong contender.
For those of us who would put any of the top-tier candidates above Orange, it's a quandary. Basically, if Orange really is going to probably be one of the top two vote-getters, I want to vote for whomever is the other one of the top two. But it's not clear whom that is.
Either Instant Runoff Voting, where people rank choices, or Approval Voting, where people simply can vote for more than one, would work well in this case. If we had Approval Voting, I'd vote for Biddle, Mara and Weaver; if IRV, I'd probably rank Weaver first, then the other two, followed by Lopez and maybe some of the other ignored candidates.
Unfortunately, that's not the system we have. Ironically, the current Council has been uninterested in voting reform largely because of fears it might weaken the Democratic Party's dominance; in this case, the current system could well mean that the one man they least want to work with could end up becoming their colleague.
Who do you want to see elected? Take the IRV-based poll below by ranking one or more of your choices, from your favorite candidate 1st down to as many as you want. Here's more about how it works.
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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by bayma on Apr 14, 2011 11:36 am • link • report
Of the rest of the candidates, who has the broadest city-wide support to chip away? I would guess Biddle or Mara, but Mara just doesn't seem to have any strong background or policy gravitas. Being a lobbyist (is that what he does?) seems to be on the wrong side of what the city should have in a Councilmember.
by William on Apr 14, 2011 11:39 am • link • report
by Paul on Apr 14, 2011 11:50 am • link • report
One final thought: Fuck, we're getting Orange, aren't we?
Sigh.
by oboe on Apr 14, 2011 11:57 am • link • report
by Geoffrey Hatchard on Apr 14, 2011 11:58 am • link • report
It has cartoon animals.
by Adam L on Apr 14, 2011 12:05 pm • link • report
Mara's chat, by the way, was very thin on new policy ideas. He basically explained how IMPACT worked, said he supported Carlos Rosario's workforce development program, and proposed pay cuts for District workers earning over 100K (the only specific spending cut proposal I recall therein). I'm hard pressed to understand why anyone is enthusiastic about Mara from a policy perspective, even though he seems like a nice guy. Weaver has lots of policy depth. I don't understand how you could put Mara and Weaver on the same level as far as policy depth; on policy, Weaver is in grad school and Mara is still in elementary.
Why has no one asked the primary candidate pushing spending cuts exactly what cuts he proposes to make up a $322 million budget shortfall? Soundbites are not enough, nor is vague talk about "wasteful spending" without identifying areas to cut.
The "tax-and-spend liberal" types like me are pretty clear on where we want to raise revenue. I'd expect the same from the other side of ideological spectrum. We need that to have a viable dialogue/debate on these issues.
I answered an extensive questionnaire weeks ago for an article that was supposed to appear on this site. It never did. We can't have dialogue without the full spectrum of voices at the table.
by Alan Page on Apr 14, 2011 12:16 pm • link • report
Saying one thing on a candidate questionnaire and the diametrical opposite at a candidate forum, depending on what group you're speaking to, is a deeply troubling characteristic in a public servant.
by Keep It Real on Apr 14, 2011 12:23 pm • link • report
by Alan Page on Apr 14, 2011 12:31 pm • link • report
by Richard Layman on Apr 14, 2011 12:32 pm • link • report
What it really shows is the flawed, elitist and lazy politics of many in the so-called new-urbanist movements. New-Urbanist have built a narrow political constituency and policy implementation that has little real grassroots support beyond some general theory. No candidate can really support or move forward such a narrow approach on an at-large basis, especially if they adopt so-called new urbanist priorities. The bottom-line is New Urbanist Crew is either too arrogant, lazy or afraid to sell these priorities on a grassroots level, but wants a candidate who will. But any candidate who would, doesn't have the political capital.
This is why we have elections, this is a good lesson in democracy vs. blog posts and glad handing.
by W Jordan on Apr 14, 2011 12:39 pm • link • report
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Condorcet_method#Comparison_with_instant_runoff_and_first-past-the-post_.28plurality.29
by Dan on Apr 14, 2011 12:43 pm • link • report
I'm glad you're on board for an IRV system, then, because they're better at preventing candidates from being elected by narrow constituencies.
by Mark Jordan on Apr 14, 2011 12:59 pm • link • report
It may be helpful to break the candidate apart by issues. For example, if a voter wanted to vote for education who who would you vote for? (my guess is Biddle because he has the stronger portfolio.)
If it was on mass transit issues, who would you vote for? (probably Weaver?)
If it was on anti-corruption who would you vote for? (Probably a toss up between Biddle, Mara and Weaver)
by Prof. Brusoe on Apr 14, 2011 1:18 pm • link • report
by John on Apr 14, 2011 1:33 pm • link • report
by Markus Batchelor on Apr 14, 2011 1:40 pm • link • report
After all, none of them worked for Pepco. That's a leg up on Orange already.
by Conor P. Williams on Apr 14, 2011 1:42 pm • link • report
by slevydc on Apr 14, 2011 1:45 pm • link • report
If you really wanted to show people how IRV works without having people game the system you should have chosen hypothetical candidates.
by Not a fan of IRV on Apr 14, 2011 1:52 pm • link • report
by DCster on Apr 14, 2011 1:58 pm • link • report
by meanteeth on Apr 14, 2011 2:08 pm • link • report
At any rate, thanks David, for capturing the true problem with this race. I've yet to decide how to use my vote within the system we are in.
by Jake Sticka on Apr 14, 2011 2:23 pm • link • report
Seagraves at Ward 3 forum night before Mayor's budget asks, "do you support raising the tax on parking garages, and have you taken donations from the industry?". All candidates answer except...
Biddle - "I don't know enough about the issue to respond." This skips the money question.
12 hrs later after Mayor's budget taxes parking garages...
Biddle - "I do not support taxing parking garages!" (BTW - he also doesn't support increased street parking costs, kidz.)
A cursory review of finance records and his web site shows money from "AutoPark, Inc", David A Wilmot an officer of Auto Park was on his host committee, and money from DC garage construction.
Doesn't GGW support increasing the garage tax like the Mayor's budget proposes?
by John on Apr 14, 2011 2:40 pm • link • report
It's clear in this instance that the author is referring to one person being elected. But that's strange considering this is an at-large council. This means when multiple seats are up for election that a bloc system is used--here it's Multi-member Plurality. That equates to regular Plurality when a single seat is open. When multiple seats are open, bloc systems like this one allow a single majority voting bloc to assign all the seats. Any minority voice can be entirely shut out from the council.
But what's interesting is that the author doesn't mention a district-based proportional representation(PR) system since this is an at-large council. Such options include semi-PR systems like cumulative voting. A traditional PR system that's also used in Cambridge is STV--not to be confused with IRV. Other newer (and more sanely behaving systems) include Asset Voting, Reweighted Range Voting, and Proportional Approval Voting.
Any of these PR systems are going to provide you with a more representational diversity than any single-winner system. Further, PR systems work best when all the seats are being voted on at once. Given the diversity of DC, I think voters would be happy to see this alternative.
by Aaron Hamlin on Apr 14, 2011 3:25 pm • link • report
Sekou Biddle seems kind of flat and dull and like he does not have any great ideas. Much of Orange's funding comes from outside the city. I don't know much about Mara, but the one time I saw him, he didn't seem to take all that much seriously. So I won't take him seriously.
by Jazzy on Apr 14, 2011 3:26 pm • link • report
by W Jordan on Apr 14, 2011 5:05 pm • link • report
by Keith Ivey on Apr 14, 2011 5:32 pm • link • report
So despite where our hearts may be, I hope we will vote for Sekou --
on election day, Tuesday April 26, or
during the early voting which has already started at One Judiciary Square.
by John Zottoli on Apr 14, 2011 6:14 pm • link • report
But IRV fails whenever there's any more nuance involved.
Basically, if there's any number of voters out there who prefer Biddle, Mara, or Weaver first, but Orange 2nd or 3rd, then IRV would fail in the same way that standard (plurality) voting does, even if Orange would lose in a one-on-one contest against one of the other three.
Example:
45%: O > M > B
25%: M > O > B
30%: B > M > O
Even though M is preferred over O by 55% of the voters, O still wins. But M would win instead if some of the B > M > O voters strategically betray their favorite, and voted M > B > O instead.
Approval voting, which Aaron suggested, doesn't have this problem. Under approval, if really all you care about is "not Orange", you can vote for everyone except Orange, but there is never a situation where you can improve the election outcome by not giving your top-choice top-marks.
As Keith points out, sometimes you have to make a hard choice whether or not to also approve your 2nd or 3rd choices too; but in those situations, what you're risking is getting your 2nd or 3rd choice elected instead of your 1st choice; whereas under IRV, when deciding whether or not to strategize, what you're risking is getting your LAST choice instead of your 1st or 2nd choice. And it's because of this that, from a strategic voters perspective, approval voting is a much, much better voting system.
by Dale Sheldon-Hess on Apr 14, 2011 7:25 pm • link • report
That's why IRV (actually, I prefer "alternative vote") is the most-used alternative to first-past-the-post in the U.S. San Francisco, Minneapolis, Memphis use it; locally, so does Takoma Park. For voters used to FPTP, IRV/AV is the easiest to understand. Since D.C. never lacks for candidates, it makes even more sense here.
by Gavin on Apr 14, 2011 7:46 pm • link • report
Wait... because you can't understand the arguments against something, it must clearly be a good idea?
::sigh:: Okay then, here's a picture:
http://rangevoting.org/BayRegsFig.html
Literally ANYTHING (except plurality or "random winner") would be better than IRV. Approval is both dead-simple and damn effective. (And IRV gets progressively worse with more candidates, so it's even worse for DC.)
by Dale Sheldon-Hess on Apr 14, 2011 7:52 pm • link • report
Unfortunately, they are all missing the forest for the trees. All of these voting systems are better than what we have today.
All are also imperfect, but mathematically it's been proven that any system is imperfect. But because a small group of people carpet bomb every thread with criticisms of a voting reform system, you end up making it a lot more difficult to get any voting reform.
I'd always be hesitant to push any kind of approval voting, anywhere, because the people pushing it are so rabid and inflexible.
by David Alpert on Apr 14, 2011 8:04 pm • link • report
I assume you're referring to Arrow's impossibility theorem.
One of the reasons "that group" is so passionate about this is because approval voting beats that theorem, by satisfying all of Arrow's axioms. Basically, it does the impossible.
It can do that because, by the strict mathematical definition Arrow used to prove his theorem, approval voting isn't even a voting system.
That said, it still isn't perfect. But one of the other reasons we're so passionate about it is because of the extensive computer simulations which conclude that it is significantly closer to perfect than, for instance, IRV, which turns out to be the worst possible system after plurality.
by Dale Sheldon-Hess on Apr 14, 2011 8:30 pm • link • report
by Smart Growth Guy on Apr 14, 2011 9:46 pm • link • report
I doubt it works well when there's only one opening.
by Michael Perkins on Apr 14, 2011 10:15 pm • link • report
Interesting discussion about how our voting system should be.
by J on Apr 14, 2011 10:47 pm • link • report
Actually, Approval Voting works BEST when there is just one winner. See these Bayesian Regret figures:
http://ScoreVoting.net/BayRegsFig.html
With more than one winner, it's generally preferred to use a proportional system, so you have some representation of different "factions". Reweighted Range Voting and Asset Voting are good here.
by Clay Shentrup on Apr 15, 2011 12:36 am • link • report
by David desJardins on Apr 15, 2011 2:43 am • link • report
One person, one vote.
It's that simple.
by Fritz on Apr 15, 2011 8:17 am • link • report
This unfortunately this is more about some wanted to change to rules so that their candidate could win. Then once they feel they have a race where their candidate would win with the old system they would want to change back. Anything, but getting their hands dirty with the real work that comes with being a real civic or political leader. Cop-Out City should be DC's new urban tag line.
by W Jordan on Apr 15, 2011 10:01 am • link • report
Yes - they're trolls because they don't agree with you.
by asuka on Apr 15, 2011 3:59 pm • link • report
by David desJardins on Apr 15, 2011 6:46 pm • link • report
You should not make the mistake to confuse incumbency with corrupt. Though it may seem that way a lot of times. One of the things that I like about CM Biddle is that he introduced legislation regulating the usage of leased vehicles by the city and requiring council approval. This is by no means a solution, but it's a start.
by Brusoe on Apr 15, 2011 8:57 pm • link • report
I like to call it the "Fox Guarding Henhouse Public Smokescreen Law"
by John on Apr 16, 2011 12:38 pm • link • report
I am by no means misguided. Score Voting and Approval Voting are just massively superior to IRV, based on objective metrics like ballot spoilage rates, Bayesian Regret, Kolmogorov complexity, Favorite Betrayal Criterion compliance -- you name it.
See www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv
If you want to call us "trolls", then please provide one iota of evidence to support your position. I've been actively researching this issue for nearly five years, and I'll willing to bet you cannot offer any argument that we have not already encountered before and refuted.
by Clay Shentrup on Apr 16, 2011 3:12 pm • link • report
Although I generally don't listen to endorsements (WaPo's usually drives me to look closer at who they don't endorse) I do pay a great deal of attention to GLAA's. Their questionnaire reflects my own priorities for the most part.
I disdain Orange for being the mouthpiece of the Chamber of Commerce in all matters and I was so thrilled to see the idiot gone that would have voted for a porcelain tea pot if they had a chance to beat him.
by copperreddc on Apr 17, 2011 12:41 am • link • report
by copperreddc on Apr 17, 2011 12:45 am • link • report
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