A bare majority of Santa Barbara’s City Council passed the most sweeping economic measure in a decade, amid high drama that generated Newsmakers hot takes on policy and politics alike.
Using mayor numbers is not apples to apples. 4 district votes yes and 2 district votes no is not a skewed vote. We will see how this election tur ns out but no need to talk about process when merits are important.
That graphic is complete hokum. How many of the voters for the 'against' council members also voted for the mayor? They're being counted twice, in order to skew the results toward the author's desired outcome.
Setting aside all of the other problems (although we really shouldn't), raw popular vote counts are a useless measure for gauging actual support for a position. Suppose we simplify down to one issue in three districts, with the election results below:
D1:
Smith (Pro) 2300
Jones (Anti) 1200
D2:
Harrison (Anti) 1700
Lee (Pro) 1500
Sanders (Pro+) 1301
D3:
Bush (Anti) 3500
Gore (Pro) 3499
Looking at this single issue, fifteen thousand voters expressed their opinions. 57% were Pro or Pro+. Applying the methodology used for this the graphic (leaving out the mayor), I would have to tell you that the voters were 69% against, based solely on the number of votes received by the winning candidates. Absurd!
This is obviously an extreme example, but the point is that you can hide a lot of inconvenient facts behind statistics if you want to.
If we are pulling data from elections that happened 5 years ago to demonstrate support for current actions, why not look into the details of the mayoral race and observe that Rowse was elected with a plurality (but not a majority) of the votes? Do we check the positions of his opponents on this topic and add their voters into the data? Of course not.
Setting aside (with difficulty) all other problems with this type of argument, granting priority to the views of the elected official with the highest raw vote count means, at present, that no opinion besides that of Donald J. Trump should matter, because he got the most votes. I don't think that's necessarily the argument you intended to be making, but it follows directly from this position.
I know actually reading the piece can be annoying and delay jumping to a hot take based on your priors, but read the text bro:
"This data point demonstrates the asymmetry between vote share and council power, pointing to flaws in the district system that City Council adopted, under threat of litigation, back in 2015 — and the need for the next council to consider putting some electoral reforms before voters."
Great article! Thanks.
GREAT TAKE!!👏👏
Using mayor numbers is not apples to apples. 4 district votes yes and 2 district votes no is not a skewed vote. We will see how this election tur ns out but no need to talk about process when merits are important.
That graphic is complete hokum. How many of the voters for the 'against' council members also voted for the mayor? They're being counted twice, in order to skew the results toward the author's desired outcome.
Setting aside all of the other problems (although we really shouldn't), raw popular vote counts are a useless measure for gauging actual support for a position. Suppose we simplify down to one issue in three districts, with the election results below:
D1:
Smith (Pro) 2300
Jones (Anti) 1200
D2:
Harrison (Anti) 1700
Lee (Pro) 1500
Sanders (Pro+) 1301
D3:
Bush (Anti) 3500
Gore (Pro) 3499
Looking at this single issue, fifteen thousand voters expressed their opinions. 57% were Pro or Pro+. Applying the methodology used for this the graphic (leaving out the mayor), I would have to tell you that the voters were 69% against, based solely on the number of votes received by the winning candidates. Absurd!
This is obviously an extreme example, but the point is that you can hide a lot of inconvenient facts behind statistics if you want to.
see text: "this data point"
Ok, let's see the text.
"This data point demonstrates..."
It. Does. Not.
If we are pulling data from elections that happened 5 years ago to demonstrate support for current actions, why not look into the details of the mayoral race and observe that Rowse was elected with a plurality (but not a majority) of the votes? Do we check the positions of his opponents on this topic and add their voters into the data? Of course not.
Setting aside (with difficulty) all other problems with this type of argument, granting priority to the views of the elected official with the highest raw vote count means, at present, that no opinion besides that of Donald J. Trump should matter, because he got the most votes. I don't think that's necessarily the argument you intended to be making, but it follows directly from this position.
I know actually reading the piece can be annoying and delay jumping to a hot take based on your priors, but read the text bro:
"This data point demonstrates the asymmetry between vote share and council power, pointing to flaws in the district system that City Council adopted, under threat of litigation, back in 2015 — and the need for the next council to consider putting some electoral reforms before voters."
report…and thanks for spelling out the mathematical (and chaotic) problem created by the Districts aetup of council.