“I am always a believer in more direct democracy, and this is not direct democracy,” says Nolan, who believes that the mayor should be elected by citizens in November when they choose councillors and School Committee members.

McGovern says that the City Council needs to give greater consideration to the School Committee when selecting the mayor.

“City councillors make their decisions on a lot of things other than who’s the best chair for the School Committee,” he says.

To remedy these issues, McGovern says that the School Committee should have a vote in the selection of the mayor, or it should choose a chair from any of its seven members in a selection process independent of the vote for mayor.

Simmons hypothetically suggests instituting a deadline by which the city’s leader must be chosen every year.

But Simmons reinforces the importance of the acting mayor as a fallback position. The role is always filled by the senior member of the Council—Reeves, in this year’s case.

This system, Simmons says, explains Cambridge’s ability to stay afloat for so long while it chooses a permanent captain.

This year was not unique in the difficulty of its mayoral election process. Since Cambridge adopted its current form of government in 1940, many of the biannual deliberations that have chosen new mayors for the city have been similarly tortuous.

In 1948, unlike this year, councillors took scores of votes each time they met, hoping to resolve the selection process as efficiently as possible. Despite these efforts, the election of Mayor Michael J. Neville required over four months and more than 1,300 ballots.

More recently, in 2000, councillors came to their decision in a six-and-a-half hour meeting on the night of Valentine’s Day, after a six-week impasse.

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.