Howardcounty

This week my theme is the urban-rural divide in US politics, both present and past: “The Real Republican Adversary? Population Density” (Dave Troy). A Baltimore entrepreneur looks at how population density is associated with (and influences?) Americans’ political choices and beliefs: “98% of the 50 most dense counties voted Obama. 98% of the 50 least dense counties voted for Romney. . . . At about 800 people per square mile, people switch from voting primarily Republican to voting primarily Democratic.” His conclusion: “Density is efficient. Density produces maximum economic output. An America that is not built fundamentally on density and efficiency is not competitive or sustainable. And a Republican party that requires America to grow inefficiently will become extinct.” See also Tim de Chant’s “How population density affected the 2012 presidential election” for (somewhat confusing) paired maps showing population density vs. Obama’s and Romney’s vote totals.1 “Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities” (Luís M. A. Bettencourt, José Lobo, Dirk Helbing, Christian Kühnert, and Geoffrey B. West). Providing some scientific underpinnings to Dave Troy’s arguments for cities and higher-density living, Geoffrey West and his colleagues claim that the growth of cities exhibits mathematical regularities and in particular that cities foster increases in innovation at a rate greater than would be expected by looking at their rate of population growth: “Many diverse properties of cities from patent production and personal income to electrical cable length are shown to be power law functions of population size with scaling exponents, β, that fall into distinct universality classes. Quantities reflecting wealth creation and innovation have β ≈1.2 >1 (increasing returns), whereas those accounting for infrastructure display β ≈0.8 <1 (economies of scale).” For a less math-heavy discussion of these ideas see the Edge interview with West. “Agenda 21 and You” [PDF] (John Birch Society). One present-day conservative response to calls for higher-density living and “sustainable development”: “The American dream of the beautiful house, big front and back yard, white picket fence, and one to two cars, is to be replaced with the United Nations’ Agenda 21 vision of living in small urban dwelling[s]. . . . As rural areas become less populated, they will become off-limits for people, but not animals and plants, such as weeds. Over time, plants and animals will move in and take over. Grass will grow uncut and grow creeping into sidewalks. . . . These once lively and prosperous communities will become ‘open space.’” “Cross of Gold” (William Jennings Bryan). In 1896 the soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee advocates on behalf of rural America: [We] say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—the pioneers away out there [pointing to the west], who rear their children near to Nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead—these people, as we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. . . . I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”2 ...

Recently my fellow HoCo blogger Tom Coale strongly recommended voting against Maryland Question 5, the state ballot question asking voters to approve or reject the US Congressional redistricting measure created by the Democratic party-dominated Maryland state legislature. As noted in a Baltimore Sun story on reaction to the measure, it was designed to ensure that all eight Congressional districts in Maryland have enough Democratic voters to ensure election of Democratic candidates to the US House of Representatives, and in particular to try to keep a Republican candidate from winning Congressional District 5 in Western Maryland. ...

I saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog and thought it interesting: Michael Chabon’s interview at Salon where he talks about his new book Telegraph Avenue and name-checks Jim Rouse, Columbia (where he grew up), and Barack Obama: I’ve been engaged in this process, since I maybe turned 40, of reconnecting through my fiction, with parts of myself—my upbringing, my heritage, whatever it may be—that had great importance, that I had somehow lost or abandoned or forgotten or set aside. . . . [The] last remaining key element of my biography that I had wandered from, and in some ways the most painful to me—which took me a while to get around to facing—was black people, and their relative visibility or invisibility in my life, in sort of Ellisonian terms. I grew up in Columbia, Md., which during the 10 or 11 years my family lived there tried and to a fair degree succeeded to be a very racially integrated, economically integrated, place where all were welcome. ...

If you could vote on exactly how Howard County spends $10M (just over 1% of its operating budget), would you take advantage of the opportunity? What if you could vote on how the county spends $100M? This thought was prompted by a blog post touching on “participatory budgeting,” a movement that started in Brazil and has since spread to other jurisdictions in Latin America and elsewhere. To quote from the PB home site, ...

I’m interrupting my blogging hiatus again to point you to an important report that I think everyone interested in Howard County and Maryland politics should read: Counting Votes 2012: A State by State Look at Election Preparedness. There’s been a lot of controversy about alleged voter fraud, with calls for voter ID cards and the like. I have my thoughts on that general topic, but for this post I’ll simply note that this report deals with a related but somewhat separate issue, namely potential problems in the counting of votes and in confirming that votes are actually counted correctly. (Related because counting votes properly is a key technique in detecting certain types of fraud, separate in that the concern here is not with verifying that people are eligible to vote, but rather with problems that can occur at the point of voting and afterward.) ...

No deep analysis tonight, just a brief report on my visit today to BonChon in Ellicott City to try out their fried chicken. The place still hasn’t officially opened, but prompted by Howchow’s report we decided to stop by and try it out during their “soft opening.” The verdict: We really enjoyed it, and will definitely be back from time to time (as often as prudence allows). The run-down: We went in the late afternoon, and it wasn’t crowded at all (one other party of four guys). We got our food in less than 15 minutes. I can see where it might be quite busy at other times though. It’s a fried chicken place, so we ate fried chicken, We didn’t try any other main dishes, and frankly I don’t see any point in doing so. (Specialization for the win!) We tried both the wings and chicken strips (which I’m not sure are all breast meat or mixed breast and thigh), the wings with the hot sauce and the strips with soy garlic sauce. Personally I preferred the wings with hot sauce: I liked the hot sauce much better, and I thought the strips, though nicely crunchy, seemed a bit on the dry side. I’m biased though, as I am a big fan of chicken wings in any form, especially fried; the strips with soy garlic sauce are certainly much more child-friendly. I got white rice as a side dish, both to cut the spiciness of the wings and to stay more in the “I could be eating this in Seoul” mood. We also got some fries, which were OK but pretty generic. We also were brought radish chunks with the chicken; these were nicely refreshing though again most children will likely spurn them. Service was attentive (not surprising, since at that time of day the staff outnumbered the customers). We talked with the waiter, the general manager, and one of the owners (presumably John Kim of Tutti Frutti fame, though we didn’t ask his name). Total cost was under $50 for three people, which I consider quite reasonable for what we got. In summary, I’m really happy to see BonChon in Ellicott City, and wish them luck with their grand opening whenever it is (September, most likely, based on our conversations). ...

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. ...