As someone who lived in Cambridge for four years, I agree with Bostonist: Cambridge’s voting system is confusing. And I’ll go further and say that it’s an ultimately undemocratic system and one that should give pause to progressives wanting to elevate PR on a larger scale. For while it does a good job at including minority voices (progressives, however, shouldn’t be uncritical though: non-mainstream and minority voices aren’t always of the liberal-left variety), it sacrifices any clear sense of legitimation (in the Weberian sense of the term). That is, various consitutiencies may be represented, but voters no have a weaker sense that they’re voting in favor for any particular stance of their government, and elected officials are far less accountable for particular stances. How do you know if you’re elected because the electorate agrees with some part of your platform, or if it’s because you’re everyone’s #3 choice? It might work in a municipality where the citizens’ pride in their exceptionalism leads them to put up with suboptimal governance, but replicated the drawbacks would become increasingly apparent.
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