News

Cambridge elects new City Council

Cambridge elects new City Council

Municipal elections in Cambridge wrapped up last week, with only one nonincumbent councillor winning a seat on Cambridge City Council. Minka Y. vanBeuzekom won over Sam Seidel, but all eight other councillors will return next year. The new Council officially takes office on Jan. 2, 2012.

Leland Cheung G, a first-time incumbent, took the greatest number of first-place votes, 2017 — more than 300 over the candidate with the second-greatest number of first place votes, Timothy J. Toomey.

Cambridge uses a proportional representation voting system in which voters rank candidates in order of preference. Once a candidate gets a certain number of first-place votes, they earn a seat and the remainder of their votes go to whoever the voter ranked as second. When the candidate a voter ranked second reaches that threshold, votes go to the third-ranked candidate, and so on.

—Ethan A. Solomon