Under the city's proportional representation (PR) system, voters rank each candidate. Once candidates have garnered enough first-place votes to exceed an established quota, first-place rankings are shifted to the voter's next-highest-ranked candidate.
"Cambridge is like a puzzle, especially with the PR form of voting. Little segments of the population have more influence that would normally have," says Roger O'Sullivan, president of the Cambridge Teachers Association (CTA).
Although many political observers decried the bitterness of the 1997 campaign, "I didn't really experience it that way," Turkel says.
"I think that it's a funny electoral system we have. We run against people we are going to serve with. And in some cases, you are running against people you want to serve with," she says.
Although the city is officially non-partisan, most elected officials belong to either the Alliance for Change or the CCA.
When the city was racked by crime, segregation issues, chronic homelessness and other problems in the late 1970s and early 1980s, political distinctions were more clearly delineated.
That is no longer the case.
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