(Image: La Chingonita) Some members of City Council have tried to ban or severely restrict food truck operations in recent years, often in response to complaints from area businesses that the trucks present unfair competition to brick and mortar stores since the trucks have lower overhead costs than a traditional restaurant business. Continue reading

(At-Large Councilmember Derek Green) Philadelphia is coming up on a local election cycle in 2023 that for various reasons is expected to be very competitive. Several members of City Council are expected to resign to run in the open Mayoral race, leaving several open Council seats that will likely attract some larger candidate fields.  Our first-past-the-post voting system isn’t the best voting system available in cases where there are large candidate fields and only one possible winner, since somebody can win with just a plurality of the electorate, who the majority of voters don’t support. There’s a good argument that Ranked-Choice Voting systems do a better job at this by ensuring the winner is somebody who has majority support, and they do this by making voters’ second, third, and fourth choice rankings count for something. By letting people rank their candidate preferences in order, the voting system can take into account people’s second and third-choice candidate preferences, and reward the candidates who are most acceptable to a majority of voters. This also helps to remove the “spoiler effect” problem under first-past-the-post elections in cases where there are multiple candidates with the same constituency. There is also some evidence that Ranked-Choice Voting leads to more positive and constructive campaigning, as the candidates have some better incentives to be well-liked by their competitors’ fans, and be the number two or three candidate on a lot of other ballots. In cities and states with ranked-choice voting, it’s common to see candidates who are running for the same seat cross-endorse one another’s campaigns. In the most recent New York City election—the first one to use the ranked-choice system voters approved—Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang endorsed fellow candidate Kathryn Garcia’s campaign, asking his supporters to rank Garcia number 2 on their ballots (she didn’t endorse him back.)  There’s no prohibition on voters choosing only one candidate like they do now, but it was notable in New York City that voters overwhelmingly used the new ranking system—86% of voters overall, ranking on average about 3 candidates. That’s after the measure was approved by almost 74% of voters in a ballot referendum, so it’s evidently been very popular.  In Philadelphia, state Senator Tony Williams had been the only elected official to date to comment on this or to suggest bringing ranked-choice here, so it was interesting to see Councilmember Derek Green starting a local push this week, introducing a resolution to hold hearings on the implications of a ranked-choice voting system in Philadelphia. The resolution was co-sponsored by Councilembers Cindy Bass, Jamie Gauthier, Isaiah Thomas, and Allan Domb.  City Council can’t change this by themselves without state authorizing legislation, but Senator Williams has prepared legislation (SB 59) which would authorize such a system in Philadelphia, and it’s possible it could pick up steam with more vocal support from local elected officials.  Anyone who wants to see this happen should make sure to call or email their Councilmembers and ask them to co-sponsor Councilmember Green’s ranked-choice voting resolution, and then let their state Senators know you want them to support SB 59 this fall. Continue reading

(Map: Politico) Prior to New York City’s most recent primary election, which was the first to deploy the ranked-choice voting system approved by voters, there had been a lot of arguments between the different candidates and party interests about how voters and candidates would fare under the new system. Continue reading

  Dan Pearson at the Inquirer editorial board makes some important points about the Census results and the politics of growth that are under-appreciated among some of our local decision-makers, and deserve a full airing in the upcoming 2023 elections for Mayor and City Council.  Continue reading

(Senator John Sabatina) Philadelphia Democratic City Committee has voted on the “Magic Seat” nominees who will appear on the November ballot in place of six judges who unaccountably retired at an odd time, and gave party bosses a chance to hand-pick their replacements.  Continue reading

(Image: Senator John Sabatina) Last week Inquirer reporter Chris Brennan introduced Clout readers to the concept of a “Magic Seat” which—while it sounds kind of fun at first—turns out to be a euphemism for a process where people can get placed into elected positions by political party bosses without having to campaign or win any public support:  Continue reading

The COVID-19 vaccines have done an incredible job at slashing the rate of hospitalization and fatalities for those who received them, even as cases have been rising due to new variants of the virus. The cases are rising enough now, mostly among the unvaccinated, but also with smaller numbers of breakthrough cases in vaccinated people, that governments are starting to consider taking some more proactive steps to mitigate it. Continue reading

A very significant milestone for Philadelphia’s transportation future happened last week without much fanfare, when the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission made its final legally-mandated annual payment of $450 million to Pennsylvania’s transit agencies. Continue reading