Data on historic use of STV in U.S. cities
All original data from More Parties or No Parties is stored here.
Do big cities need larger councils?
The DSA and Working Families Party are increasingly active in Democratic primaries and, for cities with nonpartisan ballots, first-round elections. City & State consequently reports that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new charter-review commission has been swamped with calls for “open primaries.” Out on the West Coast, however, “open primaries” are producing the same basic results.
I want to suggest that cities like New York and L.A. instead consider increasing the sizes of their councils. Doing so might take some pressure off of Democratic primaries — or what passes for primaries in cities with nonpartisan elections.
Read more…On simulating STV results
My recent report for the Manhattan Institute simulated two forms of proportional representation from the results of the 2025 New York City council election. One reader asked whether we considered STV as well. We did. The question in the age of AI is whether it’s worth the resources: time, money, and evidently water.
Read more…Discussing DC’s upcoming RCV primary on NBC4 Washington
Report: “Understanding How Proportional Representation Might Work in New York City”
John Ketcham and I have a new report out today with the Manhattan Institute. In it, we show that the effective number of electoral parties at the last New York City council election was 3.3. We defend this computation by reference to the seat-product model. Then we simulate two forms of proportional representation: open-list at the borough level, mixed-member PR with a citywide compensation tier of 20 seats.
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