From "Cincinnati Post", November 4, 1925
One hundred years ago, on November 3, 1925, Cincinnati voters jammed the polls to elect the first nine-member City Council under the city’s newly adopted charter. It took a full week and a half, eleven days, before the results of that election were known.
On election night, taxicabs sped from every polling precinct in the city, shuttling ballot boxes guarded by police officers to a ballroom at Music Hall. The Cincinnati Post [November 4, 1925] described the bustling scene there:
“A cross between a stock exchange and a county fair. That was the ordinary citizen’s impression of Music Hall Wednesday where counting of ballots in Cincinnati’s first election under the proportional representation system was resumed at 3 p.m. The checkers worked until 5 a.m. Wednesday before pausing for a rest.”
This frenetic activity marked Cincinnati’s first experience with a new method for electing City Council, a process known as Proportional Representation, sometimes abbreviated “PR.” Here is how it worked.
First the candidates were listed on a non-partisan ballot. Anyone who gathered an appropriate number of signatures was added to the ballot. In 1925, that amounted to 36 candidates. Then the ballots were printed. To ensure fairness, Cincinnati prepared 36 different ballots, with each candidate getting a turn to appear at the top of some ballots.
At the polls, voters did not just check off the nine candidates they favored. Instead, citizens were asked to rank their selected candidates. Here are the instructions as printed on the ballots:
“Put the figure 1 in the square opposite the name of your first choice. Express your second, third, and other choices by putting the figure 2 opposite the name of your second choice, the number 3 opposite the name of your third choice, and so on. You may express thus as many choices as you please, without any regard to the number being elected.”
In other words, my favorite candidate is Bill Smith, so I put the numeral one in the box opposite his name. Suzie Glutz is my second choice, so I write a two next to her name. Although only nine contenders would be elected to Council, I could rank all 36 candidates if I was so inclined.
From Collections of Cincinnati History Library and Archives
As the ballots were delivered to Music Hall, this rank-order voting became the most important factor in dragging out the tabulation. First, counting could not begin until all ballots had been delivered, all accounted for, and all reconciled with the tallies provided by the precinct captains. Then, all ballots had to be inspected to reject invalid documents. Some voters forgot to rank and marked their favored candidates with an X or a check mark. Some used an ink pen instead of the pencil provided at the polls. Some marked more than one first choice, or no first choice at all. In all, 4,361 ballots were rejected, leaving 119,730. Election officials, then declared that the 1925 “quota” was set at 11,974, or 10 percent of the valid votes cast, plus one. Any candidate with that number of first-choice votes was declared elected. In 1925, only two candidates garnered more than 11,974 first-choice votes, Edward T. Dixon and Murray Seasongood. This is where the vote got interesting—and time-consuming.
Under the winner-take-all system Cincinnati employs for elections today, many candidates receive far more votes than they actually need. In our most recent City Council election in 2023, for example, any candidate attracting 40,000 votes was elected, but a couple of candidates earned nearly 50,000 votes apiece, so 10,000 of those votes were unnecessary, surplus and theoretically “wasted.”
Under Proportional Representation, those surplus votes were distributed to the voters’ second choice candidates. Going back to my own example, if, by the time my ballot was counted, Bill Smith was already elected because he had accumulated his 10 percent plus one, my ballot would be assigned to my second choice, Suzie Glutz. If Ms. Glutz was also already elected, my ballot would be transferred to my third choice, and so on.
The redistribution of surplus votes led to some intriguing scenarios. Take Edward T. Dixon, the top vote getter in 1925. Mr. Dixon was an Irish-Catholic Democrat running with Charterite endorsement. He received the highest number of first-choice votes—21,699, meaning that 9,725 of his votes were redistributed to his voters’ second choices—but who would benefit? A 1927 analysis by S. Gale Lowrie in the journal Social Forces explored the possibilities:
“Mr. Dixon might have appealed to voters because he was a Charter Committee candidate, if so, his surplus would naturally go to another on that ticket; if his popularity lay in the fact he was a Democrat, it would go to a Democratic member of the Charter group, since there was no independent of that political faith running; if he were voted for as a Catholic, his vote might go to Mr. Higgins of the Charter ticket, or Mr. Daly of the Republican ticket; or if he drew strength from a nationalistic group, a fellow Irishman might benefit.”
In reality, Mr. Dixon’s “surplus” votes predominantly went to other Charter-endorsed candidates without regard, apparently, to religion or nationality.
The complicated process and the novelty were not the only factors contributing to the lengthy count. Implementing a new election system after decades of boss rule, the Board of Elections wanted to ensure that no one could accuse them of the slightest irregularities. Consequently, they insisted on fail-safe procedures that were time-consuming but fool-proof.
It was also noted that the staff counting the votes were temporary employees appointed under the old, patronage-driven system. The more days they worked, the more the vote counters got paid. These featherbedders had no incentive to speed up the count.
From "Cincinnati Post", November 3, 1925
At the conclusion of the vote, the new City Council accurately reflected the intentions of the voters. Without PR, not a single Republican would have won a seat on Council. As it was, the new Council comprised six Charter members and three Republicans. Post columnist Alfred Segal, writing under his penname Cincinnatus, gave PR his thumbs-up [October 11, 1925]:
“Politicians have begun a propaganda against the proportional representation system of voting. They point to the slowness of the count, and, before long, they will probably be found agitating for the abolition of proportional representation. But, judging by the returns so far, proportional representation has accomplished its purpose. It has given representation to every political group in the city.”
Segal’s endorsement underlined the strength—and the weakness—of Proportional Representation: PR did not allow any single party or faction to dominate City Council and almost ensured minority representation, whether political or racial. It was PR that enabled African Americans to finally gain seats on City Council. As Cincinnati’s first Black mayor, Theodore M. Berry, noted, PR not only ensured a Council minority to check the majority but forced minority candidates to seek support from all segments of the entire city, giving them “real rather than token power.”
This did not sit well with the traditional political parties, especially the Republicans who, under George “Boss” Cox, controlled the old 32-member City Council with 31 Cox appointees while tolerating a single Democrat. Under Proportional Representation, the Republicans had to settle for three seats on the new nine-member council. Every couple of years, the Republicans, eager to dominate council once again, attempted to get Proportional Representation abolished, but the voters clung to this representative system.
The death knell sounded in 1957. It was not the Republicans, but a resurgent Democratic Party, bolstered by strong labor support, that wanted a powerful, single-party City Council. Despite a substantial rear-guard defense by the Charter Committee, the voters agreed to return to the winner-take-all electoral system.
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