Not Quite Dimpled Chads. . .

The City of Cambridge is a wonderful home to our University. Though Harvard and the city have had arguments over the years, they have, like two young lovers, overcome their petty squabbles with ease. Just walking around Cambridge on a warm Sunday morning, we can almost smell the symbiosis.

And now our beloved 02138 is in trouble, so Harvard must help—before it’s too late. The vote tallying system for Cambridge’s local elections is flawed, and its fairness is coming into question. The title “People’s Republic of Cambridge” might end up being deserved after all, if the candidates who receive the most support don’t win.

Until recently, only circumstantial evidence of the flawed voting scheme was apparent—a system must be wrong if it allows the continued election of Cambridge City Counselor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72. With the recent recount of the Cambridge School Committee election, however, it has become clear that Cambridge’s voting system could have been invented by Stalin himself. In a close election like the recent one, the winners can be determined by the order in which the ballots are counted. If the top ballot were put at the bottom of the pile, theoretically, a different candidate could be elected.

To understand the over-complicated tallying system requires statistics at a level of rigor that would make most Harvard social science concentrators keel over and cry. To Cambridge’s credit, it computerized its voting system in 1997, but that doesn’t seem to have solved the problem. The city should continue to search for a voting system where the candidate with the most support wins.

If this system remains elusive, in the spirit of mutual respect and understanding, Harvard should help them solve this problem easily and cheaply. The University should invest its resources in creating a “Cambridge City Election” version of UCVote. Imagine the ease of typing “CambridgeVote” at the fas% prompt, and the uplifting feeling that you are participating in a fair election.