Offered here without comment:
Brook Lipsett — 4369
Rhanna Kidwell — 4310
Anne M Larner — 4244
Joshua Krintzman — 4053
Bryan P Barash — 3965
Howard M Haywood — 3742
Christopher W Steele — 3659
J. O’Connor Frantz — 3434
Karen Manning — 2745
—-
Kenneth R.L. Parker — 2477
Peter F Harrington — 2375
Kathryn K Winters — 2135
George E Mansfield — 2101
Linda Jordan Kraus — 2015
Wenhau Zhang — 2003
Charles N Shapiro — 1988
Peter Bruce — 1643
Miles R Fidelman — 1613
Lisa Teuscher Gordon — 1385
Thomas Andrew Sheff — 984
Megan Risen Meirav — 889
G. Groot Gregory — 709
Write-in 310 — 83
From the city’s unofficial results.
The Fact that Jake in having to knock on 13,000 doors, (as he had claimed ) to gain a seat on the BOA says something about the serious state of this democracy. This board is more like a friendly,agreeable, Social Club than a legislative body when the incumbency rate has reached 94% ! Look at the predominate committee voting record of votes at 7-0, 8-0, with an occasional abstention. How many NO votes are ever taken ? Something’s fishy if this were Denmark,.. ie it stinks!
Sorry wrong thread! Post at Jakes upset of Marcia Johnson thread if possible.
Here is a hypothetical question. Let’s pretend that that the alderman selected the charter commission. How would the Charter Commission outcome be different?
Are you interested in the answer?
Here is a proposal. I already have a couple aldermen’s emails. If you email me at jeffpontiff at hotmail (dot) com, with the “list” from your alderman, I will tabulate the results and report. I’ll keep you secret, as well as who supports who, and just tabulate the results.
What’s the point Prof. Pontiff? You seem to imply that “the fix was in.” I voted yesterday. I do not recall seeing Aldermen or a members of the Newton Democratic Apparatus in the voting station forcing me or anyone else to cast a ballot one way or the other.
In the end, each and every voter in Newton had the same set of options (at least for city-side issues), largely the same set of information, and was absolutely free to make her or his individual choices. Those with non-establishment options had plenty of opportunities to educate the public. In the end, these ideas were largely rejected. To allude that these results were the results of nefarious activities strikes me as sour grapes.
Elmo. I am just curious about the data. I am not alluding. If you don’t want to know. Don’t look.
@Jeffrey Pontiff
Here is some real data…
4 out of 5 registered voters in Newton did not participate in this election.
1 out of 7 people who actually voted yesterday made NO CHOICE (Blank) for Charter Commission
I talked with many people who actually voted who asked me “what is the Charter Commission?” OR a favorite “I voted for the only one name that was familiar to me, but I don’t know the guy.”
As someone involved in the Newton Democratic Party (not the DEMPAC), I find people’s lack of knowledge on the issues and candidates disheartening. It is troubling when I hear some directives that come from the head of the state Democratic Party and see the drone like responses of the party’s feet on the street. The intellectual corruption of values brought on by political correctness is raping the the ability for anyone to have an unique thought.
Correction:
1 out of 6 people who voted made NO choice for Charter Commission members (1891 out of 11054)
AND
1 out of 7 people who voted didn’t vote for or against a Charter Commission (1555 out of 11054)
Mr. Pontiff’s onto something interesting. In a confusing race with low turnout, how are low-information voters guided? Do they look to Alderman? Is there high correlation between recommendations and outcome?
Whether or not low-information voters should be guided by their elected proxies is an entirely different question.
What’s interesting about this race is that there were no incumbents (to this commission). And, (as far as I understand), the top 9 contains fewer former elected officials (Lipsitt and Larner) than the bottom 13 (Parker, Mansfield, and Shapiro).
How did we get this set?
Or it could have been that a lot of folks actually liked those 9 people. And there were so many candidates that folks who didn’t agree with that “slate” were dispersed over multiple candidates.
It is called an election. All my 9 didn’t get elected. Some of my 9 did. Lots of great candidates.
And you can fault the DEMPAC or the the democratic party or whatever, but it took some degree of thought as there is a wide range of votes between winner 1 and winner 9. Campaigning mattered.
Janet, if your 9 had won would you have accepted a complaint that only 20% of newton voted, or that the NVA slate had won which meant that folks were lemmings due to that?
Plus, doesn’t Jake’s win kinda prove the point that if you run a middle of the road race, with lots of funding and legwork, that you can take out a long term incumbent?
Jeff, if your point is that this group is probably one that the aldercritters are happy with, I think that is probably true. But I didn’t hear from one aldercritter regarding any vote for the CC. I did get about a dozen emails with different slates. Many of them had 6 or 7 of the 9. So perhaps these just ended up being the most popular 9, which coincides with the aldercritters, which coincides with the voting public.
I do think 22 candidates made it very difficult for folks to break through the noise.
I have lived in this particular part of Newton for 23 years and counting. Anecdotally, no matter WHAT the election, (city,state, national), yesterday once again, when I gave my street name to the very nice volunteer and they turn to the address page, I become the only one with a check mark in their box. Every other registered voter on the street remains blank.
I usually vote in afternoon. Maybe my neighbors vote in the evening. Possible. But only ONCE in all these years did I note someone else had their box checked ahead of me.
sheesh.
Jeffrey: If the BOA and the electorate chose the same people, maybe it means that the board does a good job of representing the voters.
Voter participation is a problem with all municipal elections. It was lower than last year when there was mayoral election, but higher than 2011.
2003: 15,369 http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/54166
2005: 15,822 (mayor) http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/48162
2007: 17,808 http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/54117
2009: 22,569 (mayor) http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/27604
2011: 9,859 http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/36100
2013: 13,366 (mayor) http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/55604
2015: 11,054 http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/69783
A bunch of useless, backward looking speculation.
The priority now should be ensuring that the CC does not make Newton governance any worse than it already is.
The number of candidates to choose among was overwhelming. Even without the charter commission, having so many at-large seats to vote on is difficult. Prior to moving to Newton, I never needed to bring a list to the polls with me to remind me who I’d decided to vote for.
As usual, some people I voted for won and some lost. I don’t see any great conspiracies in that. As to Jake, I attribute his win to his willingness to hit the pavement and talk to people – not because people want to vote for the nice guy they talked to, but because that makes him one of the few candidates where people could easily find out where he stood on issues that matter to them personally, with answers to their particular questions. It also showed seriousness and interest in potential constituents.
Thank you to everyone who has forwarded data. Please keep it coming. The more the better.
@Gail. To me, The most interesting result would be if Alderman picks are uncorrelated with votes. That being said, I anticipate that the likely result is that they are positively correlated.
Correlation does not imply causality. I can think of three stories that are consistent with positive correlation. First, alderman and the voters make independent decision using similar values and information. Second, alderman make choices based on who they anticipate will win. Third, voters incorporate information from alderman picks when they decide for whom to vote.
Did anyone get an actual “vote this slate” email for the CC with these 9 folks? That would be interesting and give a hint to why they were elected I’d think. Thus far I don’t think I got one.
One estimate that I heard (and believe was probably fairly close to accurate) was that: if you added up the Election Day volunteers for all, some, or various charter candidates of the 9 who won, plus volunteers for the W2/3/5 incumbents (which have an overlapping base of supporters with many of the individuals who were elected of the commission, whether or not the incumbents’ own views are considered), that combined figure mobilized over the course of the day was about 100 people. (Of which I was one.) And that’s just election day.
A lot of these people tapped into networks of friends and family to help them knock doors, hand out literature, attend events, send letters, send emails, etc. in the weeks leading up to the election. All of that adds up pretty quickly to a fairly formidable force of volunteers (on top of most of those 9 campaigning relentlessly for themselves across the city). I can’t really speak to what the charter slate from so-called “Garden City Coalition” had going on in terms of their volunteer base, but I suspect it was not so large and active. Certainly it wasn’t as active as the volunteers for the NVA aldermanic challengers. (I don’t know if those would have been the same volunteers or not, and there’s no point in speculating.)
At any rate, to me it seems pretty democratic and pretty non-conspiratorial, that a group of similarly minded people who managed to persuade 100 people to help them over the course of 13 hours on Tuesday (implying a pretty deep reserve of support and enthusiasm in general) would win and do so pretty convincingly.
I see a lot of talk in the comments of this blog complaining that people aren’t informed or active enough in our local democracy. I agree it would be great to get more of that. But then I also see bitter complaints and suggestions of conspiracy when dozens and dozens of people decide to rally actively behind various candidates that the complainers happen to disagree with. So I don’t really know what to make of that.
In my book, if we can get a lot of people to get enthusiastically involved to elect or re-elect certain candidates, even if it’s still a small number relative to the overall population, then that’s a good thing. And if you don’t like the candidates who win as a result, organize your side to do the same thing.
In second that Fignewton.
And for what it’s worth I’m glad that a last minute influx of dark money had little influence on the outcome.
Just the facts. No editorial. What would happen if the charter commission was selected from the endorsement lists of elected officials? If you don’t want to know the answer, please stop reading now.
From 6 endorsement lists of elected officials, the top 9 ranking picks for the Charter Commission are exactly the same as the outcome of the election.
If we restrict the endorsement lists to only those of aldermen, the top 8 picks are exactly the same as the election, and there is a tie for 9th between Karen Manning, Peter Harrington, Kathryn Winters, George Mansfield, and Wenhua Zhang.
The average list has 92.6% winning endorsements.
As you might imagine, the correlation between the lists is very high.
“Thank you” to those who have sent endorsement lists. If I get new lists, I will update.
Jeffrey, what is your point, exactly? Because I’m thinking perhaps Newton voters trust their elected officials’ endorsements for Charter Commission. Either that, or we elected officials should all go to Vegas. Go big or go home.
@Ted, I am not making a point (hard to believe?).
You said,”I’m thinking perhaps Newton voters trust their elected officials’ endorsements for Charter Commission.” The evidence is consistent with explanation. The evidence is also consistent with alderman doing a darn good job predicting outcomes, which if so, would imply they should go to Vegas. I think the first explanation you offered is better, but that is my opinion.
Ted, did you make endorsements? If so, I can add them in. You think independently (that is a compliment). My guess is that your endorsements would not be as correlated as the others.
Did you use a total of 6 lists from elected officials? That would be 5 from Alders and 1 from another elected office. They are interesting results but lists from 5/22 Alders doesn’t seem statistically significant.
Jeffrey, I scored 100% on my Charter Commission endorsements.
@Ted, you are the not the only one with 100% accuracy! I will add you in the data.
Did you convince the other alderman about your endorsements, did they convince you, a little bit of both, or was it just luck?
Does this mean we can reduce the size of the board to one?
@Marti. 4 alderman (now 5 with “sharpshooter” THM). We can use combinatorics to think about the probabilities. These results are bound to be statistically significant, as long as we don’t interpret the results as informative about the population of elected officials “in general,” but rather informative about the individuals–there is no disputing THM’s accuracy.
@Ted. Did you make endorsements of the full 9?
Jeffrey, I know the vast majority of the 22 candidates well enough to decide and 8 out of the 9 that I endorsed I picked on my own. The ninth choice was the result of many conversations with many different people, including among others elected officials and the candidate (of course).
I would happily reduce the size of the City Council to 1, as long as I get to pick who it is.
A quick story that may be instructive. A friend asked who I was voting for for Charter Commission so I gave him my list and told him to feel free to share it with others. He sent it to a listserve and within an hour I received several emails from candidates thanking me for my endorsement. Within a couple of days, someone emailed my list to me with my name off it but otherwise the same word for word. And here is the joker in the deck. Years ago, I resolved to insert a deliberate typo in my email endorsement lists so that if I got the same list back with the same typo, I could be pretty much assured where it came from. Every election I do.
I love social media.
Ted, no support from you?? Whatever, I’ll remember.
Hilarious. The good news is, I don’t have to worry about my list being copied. The bad news is Tom was on it.
Tom, at the Harvest Fair you told me you weren’t campaigning. All of the candidates I endorsed were out there campaigning–hard. Bryan Barash in particular was ubiquitous. That was the difference.
Ted, first of all, with all due respect for the other 21 candidates, I did more for CC than anyone, including the League. The league would not have started their study if the early signatures weren’t done. Without the study, they wouldn’t have taken the next step with us. That being said, I did more for the commission than anyone including anyone who campaigned. In my opinion, as usual, the endorsements were short-sighted. I’m sorry if I sound arrogant or anything else, but I took a lot of sh#t early on and had to keep it to myself for the past 8 years, then when the time comes everyone is flowing endorsements around and I don’t see my name. You can see how I could take this as unappreciated from people. Thanks for everyone who did email me or facebook in private and tell me this wouldn’t have happened without me, I appreciate it.
Ted, one last thing. People weren’t campaigning until the signatures were in. They were campaigning for themselves. The signatures drive was for the community, big difference. There were some like Rhanna and Jane who collected and campaigned I have no problem with that. I have a problem when I see people who did nothing to collect the signatures, barely campaigned except to put out signs and they get 3-4X my votes!! Ridiculous….no offense to them.
I voted for CC candidates. I attended the Ward 5 Tri Council Meet The Candidates event at the Hyde Center on a Sunday afternoon, and I listened to all the candidates. I voted for those who impressed me with their relevant experience, and their performance on that occasion and for those who I know from the really vital work they have done and continue to do for the people of Newton. I glossed over various endorsement lists, and smiled if they had included some of the names I intended to vote for. And I am pleased that all those people made the cut.
Marie, I am confused by your last sentence. Are you saying that all the people for which you voted were elected? That would be incredible.
Jeffrey, I can’t speak for Marie, and don’t know who she voted for, but I approached my CC votes in exactly the same way she did. I also am pleased with the results – not, in my case, because all my candidates won. I’m pleased even though only 4 of the 9 for whom I voted were elected, because I sincerely feel that the 5 who were elected despite lacking my vote also possess skills and experience that will be valuable to the commission.
I am, moreover, not alarmed that the CC’s work will progress without any input from 5 of the candidates I’d hoped would be elected, because I do not anticipate that the CC will now retreat into a hermetically-sealed isolation chamber, while all of the candidates who were not elected shrug, turn away, and steadfastly ignore the process from here on out.
Jen, I approached my vote the same way you and Marie did. Like you, only 4 of the people that I voted for won. That sounds about normal.
The probability of a random voter or elected official picking the correct winning CC (using actual votes to calculate probabilities) who did not use Ted’s endorsement list is 1 out of 275 million. About the same chance as winning Powerball. Of course, things are not perfectly random. Some people think like Ted, so the odds of them picking the same exact list might be a little better. That being said, anyone who perfectly picked the actual CC used some variation of Ted’s list or is not telling the truth.
The Charter Commission will meet in Rm. 211 at City Hall which by all accounts is not hermetically-sealed.
@ Jeffrey, why would it be incredible? I voted for 6 in all.
@Marie. If your remaining 3 picks are independent from Ted’s, it is approximately, (15 X 14 X 13)/3 times harder to get all 9. This is about a thousand times less likely.
Jeffrey, you’re statistics are accurate only if all 22 people had an even amount of opportunity to be on the commission. I’d argue that there are some of the candidates that had a 95% chance of winning. There were 2 or 3 candidates everyone knew was going to be on the commission. So lets say 2 people had a 100% chance of winning, now you’re odds go down to 20 X 19 X 18 X 17 X 16 X15 X 14 = ?
I too just gave a only a cursory glance at endorsements and made my decisions based on the candidates themselves, including their experience and how it related to working with 8 others to review the Charter.
I looked for candidates who I thought would bring differing viewpoints to the table, who I thought would work well with residents and who had a combination of skills when put together complemented each other.
I listened carefully to what they thought the commision could do and how they would go about it.
I liked ideas like recognizing the time limit, using an efficient approach, dividing responsibilities, encouraging residents’ participation, using the rubic cube concept of moving parts, determining the role we want city government to play, investigating innovation in other communities, and looking for any unintended consequences of changes.
I looked at roles they’ve played and how they contribute to Newton, what they know about how and what the Charter covers and how it works now – the role city government plays in Newton. Each of my selections, I thought, would bring at least one of those things to the Commission.
5 of my 9 were elected to the Charter Commision. I’m confident they will do their jobs well and hope the other candidates will stay involved in the process.
Jeffrey, your statistics have a huge flaw: you are assuming independence. My opinions about who would make a good charter commissioner appear to be highly correlated with who I think would make a good alderperson, and who they support.
The only endorsement list I saw was the Tab, and I voted for 8 of the 9 candidates who won. It’s not blind chance
Jeffry, I forgot to ask you about the probabilities of the success of 5 out of 9 votes determined using no endorsements but using the metrics I did. I’m curious.
Tom, your hypothesis isn’t verifiable so it presents a problem in determining probability, except for s**ts and giggles, which I guess is what we are doing anyway.
From my observation, your lack of campaigning hurt you. Vast numbers of voters only know what they heard and saw from candidates who were running and used only that information to make their selections. And while it’s true that years ago you began the signature collection, it’s the wide net the League threw and their advertising of the issue that voters saw in more recent years. Campaigning might have helped people remember your contribution but mainly it would have given you a chance to demonstrate your knowledge of our present government structure and what experience, ideas and skills you would bring to the Commission. Recognizing the need for Charter review and starting the signature drive, while quite commendable, isn’t reason enough to be elected. Rhanna participated but also ran a good campaign on why she should be elected. I hope you use your expertise to work with the commission; they will need consultants.
Marti,
I agree with everything you said. I knew if I didn’t go out and campaign I had a less chance of winning, thats a given. But the people that did know I was out there, mostly our elected officials, didn’t endorse me, thats where I feel hurt.
I don’t mean to belittle anything the League has done or accomplished, but if you think people don’t know about the Charter reform today, imagine 8 years ago…even 4 years ago.
Jeffrey, combinations or permutations? (still a big number)
@Adam. Combinations.
@Jessica. You are correct, but there is no flaw. The calculations assume independence, and in doing so they predict the wrong outcome. This tells us that the independence assumption is wrong. This is my takeaway.
Why is the independence assumption wrong? Ted, provides insight. He creates a list and some elected officials borrow it, either in part or whole.
The election outcome and Ted’s list are identical. Things can’t be independent. Perhaps, Ted and voters have remarkably similar reasoning, perhaps some voters use a variation of Ted’s list, or perhaps a little of each occurs.
The thing that surprises me is that if endorsements were used to pick the charter commission, the commission be comprised of the exactly the same people. This happens if we only use aldermen endorsements (adding Ted in), or if we use all elected official endorsements.
@Jeffrey: 22 choose 9 is a lot less than 275 million
@Adam. I used the actual probabilities based on percentage of votes that each individual received. If I did it correctly, it should yield a more accurate number, but your calculation tells me that I did it incorrectly. Whoops. Sorry. That being said, one out of 497,000 is still a slim chance.
if two separate people choice 9 randon people out of a universe of 22 the formula is 22 X 21 X 20 X 19 X 18 X 17 X 16 X 15 X 14= 180,503,769,600:1. (in other words, if you put 22 names in a hat and each person selected 9 names out of 22 this is what you get)
To select the first person out of the pool of 22 is 1 out of 22, to select the second person it’s 1 out of 21, etc.
Now to select five right and assume it’s the first 5 and not in some order it should be:
22 X 21 X 20 X 19 X 18= 3160080 divided by 17 X 16 X 15 X 14 0r 57120 OR
3160080 divided by 57120 = 55.3235:1
Thanks Tom. These are all big numbers.
I just got another alderman’s endorsements, again against all odds, another perfect list, 9 for 9. Please keep them coming.
Jeffrey this is my last post. I stand corrected by Adam, I thought about it and I remembered the right formula and Adam was correct. You probably feel sorry for bringing it up now:).
My original formula of 22 X 21…..X 14 was the formula for 2 people picking randomly in the exact same order. which is the 180,503,769.600:1 number. If you don’t care about order, which I think is what you want, then you divide that number by
1X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8 X 9 = 362,880 OR
180,503,769,600 divided by 362,880= 497,420:1.
Sorry for the error and mix up above.
For what it’s worth, Jeffrey, I have only ever bought two lottery tickets in my life, and I won both times. The method I used was the itchy palm, scratched on wood method. Not feeling like buying a powerball tonight.