System of Proportional Representation

And for most of the period since 1964, Blacks have held one seat on the nine-member council.

Many people estimate that the current Black population is much higher, though. And the continuous representation of Blacks on the council may be more the result of advantages City Councillor Saundra M. Graham enjoys as an incumbent than an indication of PR's effectiveness.

With Graham retiring from the council this year, many Black activists say they hope to gain two seats. But they could also end up with none.

And since there are only so many ways to divide up the nine council seats, not all of them can be fully proportional.

But most city politicos agree that PR does a good job of giving fringe views a voice in government--although possibly at the expense of effectiveness.

"In some sense, perhaps, it does too good a job," says Edward B. Feinman, a spokesperson for the Today's Independents. "The need for diversity is important, but so is the need for common goals."

Feinman says that because each councillor is responsible to a small minority of the voters, there is no incentive to seek common ground. As a result, he says, councillors spend more time arguing than trying to implement effective policies.

"It does not work toward consensus," says CCA-backed candidate Ed Cyr. "I think it's one of the reasons City Council debate gets so polarized."

Cyr says that under Plan E, PR tends to simply shift responsibility toward the unelected city manager.

"[The council's] job is to set policy," he explains. But because of its political weakness and a lack of consensus, it tends to abdicate that authority."

Cyr points to a contract extension given last February to City Manager Robert W. Healy, which contains a controversial "buyout" clause requiring the city to pay Healy through 1994 even if he cannot serve as manager.

Critics of the clause say the council is giving away its most basic executive power--the right to fire the city manager.

"The manager is stronger than one would think by reading the city charater," Cyr says.

With recent cuts in state aid, many city politicos say the council's focus on rent control could change as taxes and fiscal woes take center stage. And that new emphasis could lead to a reevaluation of the PR system itself.

"There are some folks who simply don't like PR," he says. "When the next fiscal crisis hits--and we all agree that it will hit in the next two to four years--I think that there will be increasing sentiment to change Plan E."

The current dispute between the CCA and the Independents, for example, is reminiscent of the old party conflicts, some say.

"There's just too much politicking going on--it's just like the old days [before PR] again," says Sullivan. "I think it's all over with, that's what I think."

And Cunningham says he thinks people in the city are becoming more receptive to a traditional voting system of wards and districts.

In the past year, development has become one of the most sharply debated issues before the council. Several neighborhood groups have claimed that the city's policy of actively promoting construction damages thequality of residential life.

"All those who argue that neighborhoods shouldhave more control over development, for example,are led by that idea," says Cunningham.

Other groups are also critical of PR RepublicanCity Committee chair Vincent L. Dixon says hewould prefer a council organized along the Bostonmodel, with some members representing districtsand some elected at large.

"There's something to saying, `okay, let'sshake up the cards a little again,'" Dixon says.

Dixon, of course, may have ulterior motives.The city's tiny minority of registered Republicanshas not had a representative on the council sinceCornelia B. Wheeler retired in 1969. And a returnto a ward-based system would almost inevitablystrengthen political parties.

Still, Dixon maintains that no matter how wellPR works, any system develops flaws after a time.Revision is always needed, he says.

"People learn behavior after a period of timeand they learn to manipulate it," says Dixon. "Ifthere were no PR I might suggest that we use it."

PR sounds like a complicated system, andit is.

But Bigelow says the system has a logicalbeauty, which accounts for its popularity inacademic circles. Professors of political science,she says, tend to love PR. Voters often say theyhate it.

However complicated the system may sound,experts say PR works--perhaps too well for its owngood. The basic problem with PR, they say, is thatit does exactly what it was supposed to do--electcandidates with minority support.

The most famous test on a municipal scale comesfrom New York City, which implemented the systemon a borough-by-borough basis in 1936.

But the city repealed PR in 1947--shortly afterBenjamin Davis, Jr. Was elected to the CityCouncil on the Communist party ticket. AnotherCommunist and two members of the socialistAmerican Labor Party had previously served on theNew York council.

"Communists were a minority in New York City.They got some representation," says Arend Liphartof the University of California at San Diego.

Cincinnati repealed PR in 1957 shortly afterthe election of Theodore Barry--a Black man--toits city council, says Joseph F. Zimmerman, anexpert on PR at the State University of New Yorkat Albany. And he says the timing of the twoevents is probably not a coincidence.

"It may not have been the only reason, but it'scertainly one of them," says Zimmerman. "Butagain, that's what the system was designed to do,ensure minority representation."

In fact, PR seems o work so well that electoralreformers seeking to give racial minorities a sayin government are also attracted to it.

"I wish we could get it adopted in the South,"says Edward Still, a lawyer in Birmingham, Alabamawho has mounted several challenges to electoralsystems under the federal Voting Rights Act. "Ithink it would solve a lot of our problems."

But, Still says, "I can't seem to get anyoneinterested in it. No one seems to understand it."

Several Southern towns have implemented formsof at-large voting systems, still says, givingBlacks a long missing voice in municipalgovernment. A full-fledged PR system, he says,would make the situation even better.

But Still says the nuances of PR often confusepeople into thinking that it threatens democracy.

"People think about quotas or the European listsystem and they say, 'Wait a minute. When I wentto school, we read that that's what allowed Hitlerto come to power.'"

"The political parties don't like it exactlybecause it didn't give the party bosses muchcontrol," Still says. "They hated it."

IN the United Kingdom, where thedominant Conservative and Labour parties oftenshut out groups with broader-based support, PR isalso a controversial topic.

In the 1983 general election, for example, analliance between the Liberal Party and the SocialDemocratic Party (SDP) received 25 percent of thevote nationwide but only 23 seats in Parliament.The minority Labour party won more than 250 seatswith 27 percent of the vote.

Many British citizens now say that the UKshould follow its continental counterparts andadopt PR.

"Straightforwardly, it comes back wheneverthere's a strong third party," says former SDPleader Shirley Williams, the acting director ofHarvard's Institute of Politics. "If you have aneffective third party, the `first-past-the-post'system is so unfair."

In fact, Zimmerman says political parties havegood reason to dislike PR because they depend onloyalty to a platform that a transferable systemis designed to eliminate.

And Bigelow cites several practical reasons whythe system is no longer used on a largescale--particularly the length of time needed tocount votes. votes.

"We like our election results instantly," shesays.

In a city the size of Cambridge, electionofficials need as long as a week to count the20,000 to 30,000 ballots. In New York--70 timesthe size of Cambridge--an at-large PR electioncould easily be a logistical nightmare.

On the other hand, many Cambridge residents saythe week-long vote count is one of the things theylike best about PR.

"There is a genre of humor attached to oursystem of voting, and it is not to be scoffed at,"says Cyr, adding that PR's uniqueness is also anattraction.

"It is one of the few truly Cambridgeexperiences," he says.

The cost of running a city-wide campaign isanother question raised about PR.

"While theoretically you can elect minoritycandidates, they may not be able to play thegame," says Bigelow.

But Still says a neighborhood campaign may beas likely as a citywide one to put a candidateover the quota.

"In any election system, people with more moneyand more resources can reach more voters," hesays. Under PR, though, "you've got a citycouncillor who can get elected with one-tenth ofthe vote. It doesn't matter if that one-tenthcomes from every household or from one-tenth ofthe city."

COMPLEXITY, however, is the the singlebiggest problem with using PR in modern elections,Bigelow says. People have a hard time marking thepreferential ballots, she says, and few peopleknow how votes are actually counted.

"I look at New York," says Bigelow, "and theballots are almost unintelligible. Particularlyfor people who don't have a high level ofeducation, it's very difficult to understand."

But Zimmerman and Liphart maintain that realproblem lies in the counting, not the voting.

"It's usually exaggerated to say it's acomplicated system," says Liphart. "If the averageAmerican can understand all these baseballstatistics and stuff, then the average Americancan under stand PR."

"People just care more about baseball," hesays.

Says Zimmerman, "Proponents of PR argue thatunderstanding how the ballots are counted is notthat important. You don't have to worry about howyour watch works as long as it tells the time."

And Still points out that other familiarsystems of voting are no less complicated.

"How many people understand how the ElectoralCollege works?" he asks. "That one doesn't workvery well as far as I'm concerned. PR is muchbetter."