Howardcounty

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. ...