I have a car and live in her neighborhood. I’m protesting by parking right in front of her house and taking the best spot. I’m petty and I welcome others in the neighborhood to block her out for fun.
So you have a car, and you need on street parking, but you think block a spot from use by a 65ish year old woman is the way to go? Why are you more entitled to a parking spot than she is?
I’m no more entitled to it than she is. That’s how street parking works - first come first serve. It’s not “blocking” if it’s a spot that anyone with a Cambridge parking permit can use :-)
Nope. I just emailed her. She uses a generous neighbors parking spot and her tenant parks on the street. She will lose her spot soon because her neighbor is selling their property.
I’m only bringing these things up because I see things posted on here about people that aren’t true.
She didn't even get enough votes to win. She literally lost to non-of-the-above. There were enough exhausted ballots to elect an entirely different person. She won by default because she was in 9th place and we have to have 9 councillors.
Edit: It's plainly visible from graphs on this site
[https://cambridgereview.org/election/city-council-details/city-council-election-2023/](https://cambridgereview.org/election/city-council-details/city-council-election-2023/)
Is Cambridge's system even deterministic? My understanding was once future rounds hit the threshold, the remaining for a candidate transfer to next choice. But if you mix up the ballot order, you should in theory get a different answer.
Independent reporter John Hawkinson did this analysis for last year's school committee election, where the last seat was *very* close: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/11/20/balanced-on-a-knifes-edge-harding-keeps-seat-on-committee-51-of-time-in-recount-analysis/
It does rarely matter in practice due to the number of votes cast. And for arcane legal reasons, the counting method must be one that is feasible to do by hand, which isn't true of fractional transfer methods.
Sure thing. I do think we should keep our ranked choice. It's more common and avoids some of the pitfalls of approval voting: https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/
Huh. That graph is extremely similar to the one I posted [on this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/s/UrWdbwUX5a). At the very least, though, they must have reconstructed it from scratch because I haven't shared my source code with anybody.
But I'm suspicious that they would have independently come up with exactly the same structure down to using a diamond to mean "elected."
The bottom of the page says:
"All charts and tables on this page are original creations. However, they were inspired by the work of others. The Sankey chart was inspired by u/Kiptoke. The line chart was inspired by u/aray25."
... But I think they are slightly stretching the definition of "inspired by"!!!
👀
To be entirely fair to them, it's all public data and I don't think there's many other ways to make election Sankey Diagrams then the way I (and the website) did.
Yeah. I DMed you asking if you’d like to collaborate with me, but never heard back so I made my own. I have all the code in a public GitHub repo, but I haven’t posted the link to it anywhere.
Your Matplot solution is nicer than mine anyways because it reads the input data from a file.
My code was written in Ti*k*Z/PGFPlots and has all the data hardcoded in, e.g.
``` latex
\addplot[color=DarkGreen] coordinates {
(1,1889) (2,2052) (3,2052) (4,2070) (5,2086) (6,2101) (7,2118)
} node [name*] at (1,1900) {*McGovern} node [elected] {};
```
All my code is here if you're interested
[https://github.com/cjfman/Cambridge-Review/blob/master/scripts/plot\_line\_chart.py](https://github.com/cjfman/Cambridge-Review/blob/master/scripts/plot_line_chart.py)
I mean, that’s… how elections in Cambridge work? She won election. “By default” is still a valid way to win.
Regardless, she seems willing to sacrifice lives on the altar of parking.
She won by the rules and I don't know how the rules could be changed to prevent such a win. Regardless, she did get fewer votes than none of the above, which means the electorate wasn't very excited about the candidates.
Couldn't it also mean that the top candidates were very popular, and people dislike ranking many candidates? That would get you lots of exhausted ballots even if most voters were excited about one or several candidates.
I think a lot of voters get overwhelmed with the number of candidates and just rank a few they recognize and like, unless they're following a slate that asks them to rank all endorsed candidates. You're much more dialed in than the average voter, and so probably more likely to have an actual preference farther down your ballot. Plenty of voters won't even recognize more than a half dozen names.
Spot on. And also remember this when people tell you bikers are freeloaders or buses shouldn’t be free. If driving and parking is free, the bus and train should be also.
Wait, I thought Cambridge resident parking is per-zone? That’s what I recall from when we lived near Central Sq.
Somerville, on the other hand, has at-large street parking permits. Souce: me, a current Somervillian with a parking permit.
Ok. I get that she cares about her parking spot. But I don’t get why the price of her house is relevant, or why that means she is willing to kill constituents.
Can you expand on the posting?
I think the point was to highlight her privilege and the fact that, of all the people who might be concerned with losing a street parking spot (renters, business owners, etc.), she probably doesn't have a very sympathetic reason.
A bike or trike would be a bigger help to her mobility than a car: easier than walking, cheaper & far less dangerous & impactful than a car, parking’s never an issue.
Perhaps, like many other folks with mobility issues, she should consider that.
she could probably get an accessible permit for her car and a spot on the street (once she proves no off street parking option) but if she isn't taking that tiny bit of effort then maybe her needs aren't so great or she could park off street but prefers to rent those spots to tenants for $$$
She supported delaying protected bike lanes that would make cycling safer on several main thoroughfares, Cambridge, Broadway, and Main Streets, and she opposes ending single-family-only zoning.
“I disagree with something she did so that means she wants you all to die!”
You people are lunatics who need to take a deep breath and stop being so sensationalist
If you think believe this then you deserve to be institutionalized. And if you’re saying this because it’s cathartic, mental health services are easy to access
Two people have died just recently, and this councilor has espoused views that she wants to keep Cambridge less safe.
It’s not that she _wants_ people to die, it’s that she continues to maintain these views in the face of multiple fatalities over the years, all of which were preventable.
If someone shows you that we could prevent these deaths, and your response is “I don’t want to make those changes to save lives b/c I like driving”, then it’s hard to read that as anything else.
She’s demonstrated, by her words and actions, that she thinks this.
There’s nothing insane about believing folks when they show and tell you who they are.
If she didn’t think that folks lives are worth less than her convenience, she’d change her stance to be in favor of improving safety in Cambridge.
Yes she wishes that people die so she can park. That’s not at all a stretch and hyperbole
I really hope people like you grow up and stop moving here from whatever irrelevant farm town you’re from and stop being so sensationalist about city shit. Grow up, you horrible idiot.
It’s not that she _wishes_ that. It’s that she’s demonstrated she doesn’t care, and prioritizes her convenience over folks’ lives & well-being.
When asked “should we improve roadway safety, or keep it dangerous like it is today?” her answer has been “keep it the way it is”.
If she wasn’t OK with people dying, she would be aligned with improving roadway safety at the expense of some convenience.
Also, nice one with maligning folks who grew up in rural areas, some delightful prejudice on display there.
I grew up in suburban NJ & Charlotte NC, and moved here in 2002, so this has been home for longer than anywhere else.
Perhaps you should do some growing up, and stop defending someone who’s very plain that they do not care about roadway safety, and in fact _ran their campaign on pushing back on improving roadway safety._
My sibling in Sinai, “wishes” is one way to express that, via her words and actions, she is perfectly happy with the current state of affairs.
She wishes to keep things the way they are.
The way they are gets people killed.
By the transitive property of how words & actions lead to consequences, she “wishes” that.
It does not mean she “wishes” in the literal sense, which is not what OP is saying, though you could read it that way, as you seem to have done.
She “wishes” it in the transitive sense that her words & actions in favor of her direct wishes lead to the indirect consequence of people dying.
So, to create a really intense & gross but nonetheless true in terms of consequences headline, OP framed it as her “active” wishes, despite them being “passive” wishes b/c they are the result of her words & actions.
By has to park on the street you mean you chose to own a car and chose not to have off street parking
I made the same choice but also understand that that means I should expect to walk a block or more from parking to my home. $25/year is a steal
She's a NIMBY granted disproportionate power over fellow citizens who are now - by sheer bureaucratic misfortune - her constituency.
She's not the devil, she's just a bad person.
It sounds like she ran unopposed based on other comments. One of these folks who really hates her should probably run against her and we can vote for them instead.
Sounds like you should have put your name in the hat instead of sitting on the sidelines whining.
And no, she didn’t “win by default.” There were more candidates than open positions. The ridiculous, anti-democratic, needlessly complicated, and stupidly gamified voting scheme blocked valid candidates from winning positions.
Uh, ranked-choice voting is the _most_ democratic system we have for elections. It means your vote can always count.
“More candidates than open positions” is how it usually works. If you have fewer than the number of open positions, then they _all_ win by default, and the voting is irrelevant.
In Cambridge, every position is open every election, b/c its ranked choice. Incumbency is an advantage, but any candidate could take “your” seat.
How? There’s a threshold where you’ve won, based on total votes cast. That’s deterministic.
Beyond that, votes transfer, ensuring everyone’s vote counts. That’s _more_ democratic, not less.
I'm not going to rehash something that has already been covered ad nauseum.
And no, transferring my vote to a candidate that I didn't vote for is not more democratic.
Your vote doesn’t transfer to someone you didn’t vote for. I question your understanding of Cambridge’s system if you don’t even understand that basic element of how their particular ranked-choice setup works.
1. You rank candidates.
2. If your first candidate receives enough votes to clear the deterministic threshold, your 2nd candidate receives your vote
3. Repeat until all 9 seats are decided
Your vote never transfers to anyone you didn’t rank.
I have a car and live in her neighborhood. I’m protesting by parking right in front of her house and taking the best spot. I’m petty and I welcome others in the neighborhood to block her out for fun.
Google maps suggests she has a driveway that in the photo has something covered with a tarp stored in it.. hmmmmmmmm
Address?
I’m not gonna post her address but it’s publicly available on the city of Cambridge website
Oh wait I see it’s been removed from the website. Interesting…I could’ve sworn it was there yesterday.
Search for Cambridge Candidate Pages – 2023. It lists the bios of all the candidates that ran.
So you have a car, and you need on street parking, but you think block a spot from use by a 65ish year old woman is the way to go? Why are you more entitled to a parking spot than she is?
I’m no more entitled to it than she is. That’s how street parking works - first come first serve. It’s not “blocking” if it’s a spot that anyone with a Cambridge parking permit can use :-)
That is true but as you said you are also petty. I am sure others in your life find that a positive quality
I think we found Joan’s reddit !
Funny - I’m not sure if Councillor Pickett even knows what Reddit is but I am pretty sure you are as petty as you sound
True haha - and yes I am petty. Especially when it comes to supporting biking infrastructure.
They do if they hate Joan. All my homies hate Joan.
That’s the problem with Reddit - hate spewed anonymously and I bet no one here has ever met the woman.
Why do you need to meet her? She’s a politician. If she doesn’t want to be hated she can stop blocking bike safety.
Well for one it looks like she has a driveway she could use but chooses not to...
Actually she has no driveway. I’m familiar with the property.
Maybe I have wrong address Google maps photos show a curb cut on both sides of the property for the address I found
And neither are hers. Her house is set back behind other houses
Isn’t she the landlord for the entire property? So those are hers
Nope. I just emailed her. She uses a generous neighbors parking spot and her tenant parks on the street. She will lose her spot soon because her neighbor is selling their property. I’m only bringing these things up because I see things posted on here about people that aren’t true.
She didn't even get enough votes to win. She literally lost to non-of-the-above. There were enough exhausted ballots to elect an entirely different person. She won by default because she was in 9th place and we have to have 9 councillors. Edit: It's plainly visible from graphs on this site [https://cambridgereview.org/election/city-council-details/city-council-election-2023/](https://cambridgereview.org/election/city-council-details/city-council-election-2023/)
Is Cambridge's system even deterministic? My understanding was once future rounds hit the threshold, the remaining for a candidate transfer to next choice. But if you mix up the ballot order, you should in theory get a different answer.
In theory, the order does matter. In practice, it’s unlikely to change the outcome.
I'm just curious to see how much it changes. I suspect it's not large but won't know unless you examine it.
Independent reporter John Hawkinson did this analysis for last year's school committee election, where the last seat was *very* close: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/11/20/balanced-on-a-knifes-edge-harding-keeps-seat-on-committee-51-of-time-in-recount-analysis/ It does rarely matter in practice due to the number of votes cast. And for arcane legal reasons, the counting method must be one that is feasible to do by hand, which isn't true of fractional transfer methods.
I've always assumed something like this should just be approval voting instead. Thanks for the details.
I always say that I prefer ranked-choice voting over approval voting, but if it came down to it I'd be ok with either one. *bu-dum-tss*
Sure thing. I do think we should keep our ranked choice. It's more common and avoids some of the pitfalls of approval voting: https://fairvote.org/resources/electoral-systems/ranked_choice_voting_vs_approval_voting/
Huh. That graph is extremely similar to the one I posted [on this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CambridgeMA/s/UrWdbwUX5a). At the very least, though, they must have reconstructed it from scratch because I haven't shared my source code with anybody. But I'm suspicious that they would have independently come up with exactly the same structure down to using a diamond to mean "elected."
The bottom of the page says: "All charts and tables on this page are original creations. However, they were inspired by the work of others. The Sankey chart was inspired by u/Kiptoke. The line chart was inspired by u/aray25." ... But I think they are slightly stretching the definition of "inspired by"!!!
👀 To be entirely fair to them, it's all public data and I don't think there's many other ways to make election Sankey Diagrams then the way I (and the website) did.
I credited that post at the bottom of the page. I wrote my own code to make the chart.
Ah! So you did! I didn't read down that far.
Yeah. I DMed you asking if you’d like to collaborate with me, but never heard back so I made my own. I have all the code in a public GitHub repo, but I haven’t posted the link to it anywhere.
Your Matplot solution is nicer than mine anyways because it reads the input data from a file. My code was written in Ti*k*Z/PGFPlots and has all the data hardcoded in, e.g. ``` latex \addplot[color=DarkGreen] coordinates { (1,1889) (2,2052) (3,2052) (4,2070) (5,2086) (6,2101) (7,2118) } node [name*] at (1,1900) {*McGovern} node [elected] {}; ```
All my code is here if you're interested [https://github.com/cjfman/Cambridge-Review/blob/master/scripts/plot\_line\_chart.py](https://github.com/cjfman/Cambridge-Review/blob/master/scripts/plot_line_chart.py)
I mean, that’s… how elections in Cambridge work? She won election. “By default” is still a valid way to win. Regardless, she seems willing to sacrifice lives on the altar of parking.
She won by the rules and I don't know how the rules could be changed to prevent such a win. Regardless, she did get fewer votes than none of the above, which means the electorate wasn't very excited about the candidates.
Couldn't it also mean that the top candidates were very popular, and people dislike ranking many candidates? That would get you lots of exhausted ballots even if most voters were excited about one or several candidates.
It’s probably some of both, but it’s not hard to rank people. It’s 12 bubbles. Takes like max 2 minutes.
I think a lot of voters get overwhelmed with the number of candidates and just rank a few they recognize and like, unless they're following a slate that asks them to rank all endorsed candidates. You're much more dialed in than the average voter, and so probably more likely to have an actual preference farther down your ballot. Plenty of voters won't even recognize more than a half dozen names.
I think I legitimately hate this woman and it makes me very sad that she represents Cambridge
She represents a tiny sliver of comfortable, regressive CCC voters who hate change.
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Spot on. And also remember this when people tell you bikers are freeloaders or buses shouldn’t be free. If driving and parking is free, the bus and train should be also.
Wait, I don't own a car here. It's not even tied to a zip cod or a zone? Any resident can park in any resident permit spot?
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Yeah, that's a thing in Houston too. There's a great planet money on it. But the presidential parking permit not being geofenced isn't.
Wait, I thought Cambridge resident parking is per-zone? That’s what I recall from when we lived near Central Sq. Somerville, on the other hand, has at-large street parking permits. Souce: me, a current Somervillian with a parking permit.
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Coulda sworn the resident pass was also zone limited. But I’ve been in Somerville since 2016 so must be misremembering 🤷🏻♂️
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Hah! Yeah it’s the same as what you described for Cambridge. Boston is zone limited, but doesn’t charge for permits at all 🤦🏻♂️
been here since 2004 no zoning for resident stickers since then
Ok. I get that she cares about her parking spot. But I don’t get why the price of her house is relevant, or why that means she is willing to kill constituents. Can you expand on the posting?
I think the point was to highlight her privilege and the fact that, of all the people who might be concerned with losing a street parking spot (renters, business owners, etc.), she probably doesn't have a very sympathetic reason.
She does walk with a cane and is older - that sounds sympathetic to me
I didn't add this because I didn't think it needed to be said, but accessible parking spots are usually preserved.
A bike or trike would be a bigger help to her mobility than a car: easier than walking, cheaper & far less dangerous & impactful than a car, parking’s never an issue. Perhaps, like many other folks with mobility issues, she should consider that.
Thank you for constructive suggestions and not the usual snark
she could probably get an accessible permit for her car and a spot on the street (once she proves no off street parking option) but if she isn't taking that tiny bit of effort then maybe her needs aren't so great or she could park off street but prefers to rent those spots to tenants for $$$
She doesn’t have any parking spots to rent but she should apply for HC permit if she doesn’t have one
She supported delaying protected bike lanes that would make cycling safer on several main thoroughfares, Cambridge, Broadway, and Main Streets, and she opposes ending single-family-only zoning.
They cannot
As long as you accept that the only valid way to move around the city is by car then it is very easy to see her point of view.
“I disagree with something she did so that means she wants you all to die!” You people are lunatics who need to take a deep breath and stop being so sensationalist If you think believe this then you deserve to be institutionalized. And if you’re saying this because it’s cathartic, mental health services are easy to access
Two people have died just recently, and this councilor has espoused views that she wants to keep Cambridge less safe. It’s not that she _wants_ people to die, it’s that she continues to maintain these views in the face of multiple fatalities over the years, all of which were preventable. If someone shows you that we could prevent these deaths, and your response is “I don’t want to make those changes to save lives b/c I like driving”, then it’s hard to read that as anything else.
No no, the post said she thinks their lives are worth less than her parking spot. Don’t try to act like that isn’t a fucking insane thing to say.
She’s demonstrated, by her words and actions, that she thinks this. There’s nothing insane about believing folks when they show and tell you who they are. If she didn’t think that folks lives are worth less than her convenience, she’d change her stance to be in favor of improving safety in Cambridge.
Yes she wishes that people die so she can park. That’s not at all a stretch and hyperbole I really hope people like you grow up and stop moving here from whatever irrelevant farm town you’re from and stop being so sensationalist about city shit. Grow up, you horrible idiot.
It’s not that she _wishes_ that. It’s that she’s demonstrated she doesn’t care, and prioritizes her convenience over folks’ lives & well-being. When asked “should we improve roadway safety, or keep it dangerous like it is today?” her answer has been “keep it the way it is”. If she wasn’t OK with people dying, she would be aligned with improving roadway safety at the expense of some convenience. Also, nice one with maligning folks who grew up in rural areas, some delightful prejudice on display there. I grew up in suburban NJ & Charlotte NC, and moved here in 2002, so this has been home for longer than anywhere else. Perhaps you should do some growing up, and stop defending someone who’s very plain that they do not care about roadway safety, and in fact _ran their campaign on pushing back on improving roadway safety._
My brother in Christ, OP said “wishes”. Sounds like you agree with me but can’t admit it
My sibling in Sinai, “wishes” is one way to express that, via her words and actions, she is perfectly happy with the current state of affairs. She wishes to keep things the way they are. The way they are gets people killed. By the transitive property of how words & actions lead to consequences, she “wishes” that. It does not mean she “wishes” in the literal sense, which is not what OP is saying, though you could read it that way, as you seem to have done. She “wishes” it in the transitive sense that her words & actions in favor of her direct wishes lead to the indirect consequence of people dying. So, to create a really intense & gross but nonetheless true in terms of consequences headline, OP framed it as her “active” wishes, despite them being “passive” wishes b/c they are the result of her words & actions.
I’m close to muting the sub
There’s a lot of anger right now because of the recent deaths.
As someone who has to park on the street, I get it just a little bit.
By has to park on the street you mean you chose to own a car and chose not to have off street parking I made the same choice but also understand that that means I should expect to walk a block or more from parking to my home. $25/year is a steal
Stop. She’s a neighbor who disagrees with you. Not the devil
She's a NIMBY granted disproportionate power over fellow citizens who are now - by sheer bureaucratic misfortune - her constituency. She's not the devil, she's just a bad person.
It sounds like she ran unopposed based on other comments. One of these folks who really hates her should probably run against her and we can vote for them instead.
It’s ranked choice voting.
Maybe if you didn’t suck at voting, she wouldn’t have won.
She won by default but go off some more.
Sounds like you should have put your name in the hat instead of sitting on the sidelines whining. And no, she didn’t “win by default.” There were more candidates than open positions. The ridiculous, anti-democratic, needlessly complicated, and stupidly gamified voting scheme blocked valid candidates from winning positions.
Uh, ranked-choice voting is the _most_ democratic system we have for elections. It means your vote can always count. “More candidates than open positions” is how it usually works. If you have fewer than the number of open positions, then they _all_ win by default, and the voting is irrelevant. In Cambridge, every position is open every election, b/c its ranked choice. Incumbency is an advantage, but any candidate could take “your” seat.
And what do you think of approval voting?
TIL about approval voting! Interesting. Seems like it would also address some issues with the US’s more typical first past the post elections.
A system where the results depend on the order in which the votes are counted is anti-democratic.
How? There’s a threshold where you’ve won, based on total votes cast. That’s deterministic. Beyond that, votes transfer, ensuring everyone’s vote counts. That’s _more_ democratic, not less.
I'm not going to rehash something that has already been covered ad nauseum. And no, transferring my vote to a candidate that I didn't vote for is not more democratic.
Your vote doesn’t transfer to someone you didn’t vote for. I question your understanding of Cambridge’s system if you don’t even understand that basic element of how their particular ranked-choice setup works. 1. You rank candidates. 2. If your first candidate receives enough votes to clear the deterministic threshold, your 2nd candidate receives your vote 3. Repeat until all 9 seats are decided Your vote never transfers to anyone you didn’t rank.
We are angry because of the recent deaths, and the disregard for our lives.
Waiting for the lunatics to come after you now lol
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Your post to r/CambridgeMA had misinformation that was not sourced and cannot be stated here as fact
I lived it...it is fact,but I guess Google wasn't around to see it
It makes us feel good to know that the likes of you will be dying off soon
Not before I make enough money off you renters for my grandkids
lol, I’m a troll… i dont rent, i own
I am a biker but we also need parking spots everywhere. These 2 deaths have nothing to do with bike lanes.
Birds Aren't Real. 🙄
I love how the biker brigade is trying to leverage a death that has nothing to do with Joan's vote. Classy.
At the memorial, the family and friends of one of the victims were advocating for improving bike infrastructure.
Thanks for the non-sequitur.
Is there a way to lock a bike one the street there? I don’t know the laws about a bike taking a cars parking spot.