Word: electioneer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Forty-two years ago, the city of New York conducted its last election under the voting system known as proportional representation.
When votes are counted, candidates with more than a specific quota are declared elected. Election officials then look at the candidate's "surplus"--the number of votes in excess of the quota--and "transfer" them to the next choice.
If no one is above the quota, election officials transfer the votes of those candidates with the lowest number. This process repeats itself until the proper number of candidates is elected.
One of their chief complaints is that "proportional representation" is really "perpetual representation": Sitting councillors almost always win. Critics of PR point to the most recent council election in 1987, when nine incumbents sought re-election, and nine incumbents won.
Credit for all this goes to Museveni, 45, the self-described freedom fighter whose National Resistance Army triumphantly entered an exhausted Kampala after five years of guerrilla war against a series of brief governments that succeeded Amin's. Once a firebrand student of economics and politics at Tanzania's University...