Using slates to decide your City Council votes

There are many people running for City Council, you probably only want to rank some of them (remember that you rank multiple candidates) in Cambridge.) How do you choose who to rank without spending a huge amount of time?

In this article I’ll cover:

• An easy way to choose who to rank: endorsement slates and how to use them.
• Relevant endorsement slates.
• Anomalies and edge cases.
• Using multiple slates to choose candidates, with some examples.

Using slates to whittle down your voting list

If you look through City Council voting records, you’ll see many votes pass 9 to 0. There is broad consensus on at least some issues. For example, they all believe that electric transformer explosions are bad.

That means your choices are more about how they will vote on topics where there isn’t agreement. There are at least three ways you can go about finding out positions on controversial issues:

• Voting records. This limits you to incumbents.
• Written material: Answers to questionnaires by various interest groups, as well as candidate websites and literature. The problem here is that some candidates will lie or obfuscate. If you know what to look for, you can figure out their real position, but that’s a whole other article I will have to write, and can be difficult if you’re not in the know.
• Endorsements by interest groups: They did the research to decide which candidates match their goals, why not use it? That’s what I’ll be talking about in this article.

A useful endorsement tells you where candidates stand

Useful endorsements, for my purposes at least, are those which draw a clear line in the sand: the endorsed candidates support position X. That means if you also support X, you should vote for some or all of the candidates. If you oppose X, the endorsement is still useful, since it tells you who not to vote for.

Less useful endorsements

Some slates tend to be unhelpful, because they don’t really have consistent positions. For example, the Cambridge Residents Alliance (CRA) supported with caveats the affordable housing project at 2072 Mass Ave, while then-Councilor Carlone spoke against the project. The CRA then endorsed Carlone despite affordable housing being on their platform.

The issue not whether or not I agree with Carlone or with the CRA’s endorsement. Rather, it’s that I find their endorsements uninformative for the process I am proposing, since they don’t seem to give information about candidate positions.

Some useful endorsement slates

Cambridge Bicycle Safety (CBS)

CBS aims to make biking safer by building safer infrastructure, primarily separated bicycle lanes but also safer intersections.

Endorsed candidates are those who said they would support finishing the first pass bicycle network by 2026. Additionally, a subset of candidates with a perfect voting record (if incumbents) and with good questionnaire answers were designated Bike Champions.

Their endorsed candidates, with Bike Champions in bold with a 🚲 symbol:

• Burhan Azeem 🚲
• Marc McGovern 🚲
• Sumbul Siddiqui 🚲
• Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler 🚲
• Ayah Al-Zubi 🚲
• Dana Ray Bullister 🚲
• Ned Melanson 🚲
• Patty Nolan
• Cathie Zusy
• LaQueen Battle
• Peter Hsu
• Stan Rivkin

A Better Cambridge (ABC)

ABC aims to make housing more affordable by enabling both more subsidized affordable housing for low-income people, and by enabling more market-rate housing. Their endorsed candidates:

• Burhan Azeem
• Dana Ray Bullister
• Marc McGovern
• Ned Melanson
• Sumbul Siddiqui
• E. Denise Simmons
• Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler
• Ayesha Wilson

Cambridge Citizens Coalition (CCC)

CCC’s main aim is to keep housing structures at approximately the same shape they are now, i.e. no increase in density. This in practice means they oppose essentially all subsidized affordable housing projects, claiming they are too tall. Secondarily they aim for low taxes, and they are somewhat opposed to bike lanes. Their endorsed candidates:

• Elizabeth Bisio
• John Hanratty
• Peter Hsu
• Zion Sherin
• Ayesha Wilson
• Catherine Zusy

(Technically also Louise Venden, but she is a write-in, and also has a single $50 donation from someone who isn’t her, so she does not seem viable.)

Boston Democratic Socialists of American (DSA)

The DSA is one of the more organized socialist groups. They endorsed:

• Ayah Al-Zubi
• Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler

Here’s a summary of the candidates’ endorsements:

Candidate	CBS 🚲	ABC 🏢	CCC 🏠	DSA 🌹
Al-Zubi	✅			✅
Azeem	✅	✅
Battle	✓
Bisio			✅
Bullister	✅	✅
Hanratty			✅
Hsu	✓		✅
McGovern	✅	✅
Melanson	✅	✅
Nolan	✓
Rivkin	✓
Sherin			✅
Siddiqui	✅	✅
Simmons		✅
Sobrinho-Wheeler	✅	✅		✅
Wilson		✅	✅
Zusy	✓		✅

Anomalies and edge cases

Councilor Ayesha Wilson has somehow managed, for the second election in a row, to get both the pro-density (ABC) and anti-density (CCC) endorsements at the same time. This is impressive, I didn’t think she would manage it this time. As far as voting record goes she is closer to ABC on housing, and closer to CCC in her opposition to bike lanes.

Tim Flaherty has no endorsements from these groups. He has raised vast sums of money (mostly in large sums from outside-of-Cambridge donors), and is being supported by past Councilors, so he is a viable candidate. Since he is anti-bike-lane and isn’t particularly pro-density, on the face of it he would’ve been a good candidate for the CCC.

In previous elections Nolan was endorsed by the CCC. Her voting record on housing this term is the same as Wilson’s (not to the CCC’s liking, but Wilson got endorsed anyway) so her lack of endorsement is a little strange.

Using the slates to choose who to vote for

Given a set of policy positions, you can use the intersection of the slates you approve of as your top choices, removing people on slates you dislike.

Then, if you still want to rank more people, add people who have a partial overlap with your chosen slates.

This is best seen via some examples.

Example #1: Anti-density, pro-bike-lanes

Let’s imagine how a voter who dislikes density but likes bike lanes might vote. In this situation:

• CBS is an endorsement, since they like bike lanes.
• CCC is an endorsement, since they dislike density.
• ABC is an anti-endorsement.
• DSA is neutral, so we’ll ignore it.

If bike lanes slightly outweigh anti-density, a suitable candidate ranking might be:

1. Al-Zubi, the least pro-density bike champion (remember she has no ABC endorsement.)
2. Zusy and Hsu (endorsed by both CCC and CBS).
3. Battle, Rivkin, and Nolan (they have no ABC endorsement, endorsed by CBS).

If they hate density with the fire of a thousand suns, and merely like bike lanes, the order and choices might be different. But in general their choices will be some combination of CCC endorsees, CBS endorsees, and filtering out people endorsed by ABC.

Whatever their priority, they would never rank Simmons, since she is both pro-density, anti-bike-lane. And Wilson’s very anti-bike-lane, and somewhat pro-density, so they’d not rank her either.

Example #2: How I’m voting

I like bike lanes, affordable housing, and density. And I’m likely to align on a bunch of other issues with candidates endorsed by the DSA. That means I’ll be voting for:

• The overlap of the CBS slate and ABC endorsements; in practice these are all bike champions. That means Azeem, Bullister, McGovern, Melanson, Siddiqui, and Sobrinho-Wheeler.
• Ayah Al-Zubi is also a bike champion, and will be OK on housing (my minimal threshold is “supports subsidized affordable housing”), and will be aligned with many of my other concerns.

So that’s 8 candidates, and probably a sufficiently high number. My personal #1 vote is Sobrinho-Wheeler, and the rest I’ll rank in some order to be decided later.

Is this enough to choose who to vote for?

Is this approach sufficient? Depends what issues you care about. If housing or biking are top issues for you, this can filter things down enough that you may well be able to just go and vote. If you have a different top issues, policing say, it may not suffice because there are no slates devoted specifically to this issue.

A bit more

Song of the day: I’m The President by KNOWER.