Many people recall that John Maynard Keynes characterized “practical men” as being the “slaves of some defunct economist.” Fewer people recall that Keynes accorded political philosophers equal weight in influencing the opinions of those practical men. I note this to justify why I spent several hours of my spare time reading the political philosopher John Tomasi’s new book Free Market Fairness, which according to the blurb “offers a bold new way of thinking about politics, economics, and justice—one that will challenge readers on both the left and right.” It’s also why I now feel compelled to spend a bit more time recommending it to others and outlining why I think it’s important. ...

Thus far this weekend I’ve suggested revamping the way we elect the Howard County Council as the price for extending the time council members can serve, proposed the single transferable vote system as an alternative, outlined its advantages, and explained how it would change the two main parties’ strategies. I’ll conclude this weekend by discussing how STV would affect the chances of candidates who represent a relatively small minority of voters. As we saw in the last post, if a bloc of voters exceeds the size of the STV quota (one-sixth of the voters plus one for a five-member council, or 17,001 voters in our example) then they can elect a candidate of their choosing simply by voting for that candidate as their first choice. But what if the bloc of voters is smaller than a quota, and its chosen candidate can’t attract that many first-preference votes? The alternative strategy is simple: If you can’t be the first choice of lots of voters, try to become everybody’s second choice. ...

Walking around the neighborhood after publishing my last post I had a sudden pang of anxiety: Were the things I wrote about STV elections really the case? In particular, people have always been able to take advantage of bloc voting to elect a favored candidate (or candidates); what’s so different about STV compared to a conventional at-large election? Fortunately I was able to convince myself that STV worked (or at least could work) the way I thought I did. I’m now writing my thoughts down just to make sure—and of course in the hope that others might find this informative. ...

In part 1 of this two-part post I discussed my proposal to replace the current way of electing the Howard County Council with a new scheme to elect council members county-wide using a single transferable vote (STV) scheme. As is apparent from even my simplified explanation, understanding and running an STV election is significantly more difficult than a traditional by-district or at-large election. Why put ourselves to this extra trouble? In short, because STV can do a much better job of ensuring that election results reflect voters’ true preferences. ...

In my previous post I proposed a bargain between the voters of Howard County and those who want to extend the time Howard County Council members can serve: Tie the proposed charter change to allow four council terms to other changes that scrap the way we currently elect the council and replace it with something better. My first proposal is to abandon the use of council districts and return to the days when council candidates ran on a county-wide basis. However we can’t simply return to the old at-large scheme, which had its own problems. ...

As noted by HoCo Rising, Calvin Ball recently proposed allowing Howard County Council members to serve four terms instead of three. The usual opinionating ensued; speaking for myself, although I’m not a huge fan of term limits I don’t think they’re illegitimate either. In essence they’re an expression of voters’ distrust of politicians and a blunt instrument by which voters try to compensate for perceived flaws in the political system. Since the political system does have flaws and politicians do act out of self-interest, we can forgive voters for being attracted to the idea of term limits. ...

As some of you know, I like to learn new things. For example, I’m trying to re-learn some of the statistical knowledge I’ve forgotten over the years, and as a side project to that I’m learning the computer programming language Python (partly because it’s used by many folks who do scientific programming, and partly because it’s useful for other reasons). I’m also learning some about mapping and geographic information systems (GIS) as a follow-on to my research on Howard County Council redistricting. ...

Some people are fond of using the term “statist” to describe their political opponents. (I’ve never heard of anyone using it to describe themselves.) For example, in response to a HoCo Rising post on a fundraiser held by Howard County council member Courtney Watson, Bill Bissenas commented that both Watson and Guy Guzzone (her rumored opponent in the next county executive race) are “statists of the highest order,” in Watson’s case “despite [her] efforts to convince folks otherwise.” In response to which Dave Bittner asked Bill, “you use the term, ‘statist’ a lot. Could you define it for me?” ...

Technology and education is a funny topic. On the one hand technological innovation in education holds out the promise of helping students learn better and teachers teach better. Improving the productivity of teachers in particular I think is key to addressing long-term educational budget issues in Howard County and elsewhere. On the other hand, there’s probably been more hype, blather, and outright b******t associated with technology in education than most other subjects. Every new technological innovation with some sort of educational application, from television to social networks, gets hailed as the one true path to revolutionizing education. (For example, I just got the latest issue of Wired magazine, in which a Stanford professor claims that Internet-enabled online learning will lead to there being only ten institutions in the world delivering higher education–all the rest having succumbed to the gale force winds of creative destruction.) ...

As reported by the Howard County Times, county executive Ken Ulman “decided not to sign” the council redistricting bill passed by the Howard County Council by a 3-2 vote, and as a result the original plan proposed by the redistricting commission will become law (per the Howard County charter). I’ll leave it to others to comment on the whys and wherefores of Ulman’s decision (except to say that he’s been taking a fair number of politically contentious stands for a man who supposedly wants to be elected governor). I will however note that this is not the first time a county executive has found himself in the middle of controversy relating to Howard County Council redistricting. ...