Every explanation I have read about the merits of Proportional Representation voting (PR) have involved a notion that everybody is a racist and when a race is in a minority, their racist agenda cannot be realized. The idea that people don't enter the voting booth (or whatever you call those things nowadays) and that elected officials won't rise to the occasion is petty and small minded. Actually, it's downright un-American.
I have never felt councilmembers I have and haven't voted for, Leslie Ghiz, Roxanne Qualls, Laketa Cole and Cecil Thomas have ever thought any less of me because I have a white penis. The idea that populating our city council with vaginas and black flesh will make for better governance is ridiculous.
PR is credited with getting a mulatto son of an immigrant nominated as a corporate party's candidate for president, but it also shut out a woman whose American heritage runs generations deeper. Women make up a greater proportion of the country. Children of immigrants certainly don't make up a majority. How is this more fair ?
Further, if we want to make sure our demographics are equally represented on the council, we will need to make sure we have the proper number of black and white men and women. The notion gets even crazier when you take in things like religion, economic class, education, age, sexual orientation, handicaps and so on. Indeed, I would think wealth and education would be a better standard for a candidate than race or sex (obviously ideas don't count).
The cost to implement this goofy plan has been estimated to be somewhere between $20,000 and $3,000,000. For the lowball price we get hand counting that will lend itself to fraud, take about 2 weeks to get a result and cost us accreditation from the Federal government. Then, if it doesn't work the way we want - what plan will we try next ? At what cost ?
The best explanation I can find for why Cincinnati abandoned this method of voting in the 50s is that The White Man is an Evil Racist Scumbag.
yay
Only one other city in the US uses this method of voting. Why ?
I guess that after we get this convoluted mess in place, we can work on quotas for juries.