Word: pr
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This City of 107,000 is the only one in the nation to vote under a system called Proportional Representation (PR). At one time or another, PR was used in 22 municipalities across the country. New York abandoned it in 1949 (though recently there has been agitation for its return), Cincinnati in 1957, and Hopkins, Minn...
...Cambridge, PR was adopted along with the City Manager form of government in 1941, and since then has been unsuccessfully challenged at the polls four times...
...PR is extraordinarily complicated--one of the main arguments of the anti-PR force's is that few voters understand the system. "They've been using it for 24 years and still don't know what it's about," says Lawrence Brennan, who is leading the fight against PR...
...supporters claim, however, that PR's great asset is that it enables different minority groups to gain representation roughly equal to their strength. Thus, on the present Cambridge Council there is one Italian-American, one Negro...
Opponents of PR insist that the system exerts a permanent divisive influence on the City. Instead of a coalition of interests, the majority ought to rule, they say. What they propose to replace PR with is the traditional non-partisan system of citywide primaries and general elections. In the primary the 18 candidates receiving the highest totals would be nominated for the general election; of these, nine would win in November...