TRURO — Voters narrowly approved one of four zoning amendments late Tuesday night at the annual town meeting. But town officials were still looking at the exact vote count on that article yesterday.Note this is not from The Onion. This is from real life. Via.
In a vote of 136 to 70, voters passed a new time limit on how quickly a cottage colony, cabin colony, motel or hotel can be converted to condominiums...The exact count of the vote — 136 to 70 —had town officials hitting their calculators yesterday. The zoning measure needed a two-thirds vote to pass. A calculation by town accountant Trudy Brazil indicated that 136 votes are two-thirds of 206 total votes, said Town Clerk Cynthia Slade.
Brazil said she used the calculation of .66 multiplied by 206 to obtain the number.
But using .6666 — a more accurate version of two-thirds — the affirmative vote needed to be 137 instead of 136, according to an anonymous caller to town hall and to the Times.
Slade said that she called several of her colleagues to see how they calculate a two-thirds vote, and the answer varied widely. In Provincetown, Town Clerk Doug Johnstone uses .66. But Johnstone said he'd never had a close vote where it might matter...
Slade said she will let the state Attorney General's office decide on the correct count, as part of their normal review of town meeting decisions.
03 July 2009
Town officials can't agree on the value of 2/3
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Sigh if you're going to use 2 decimal places, standard math would have 2/3 as 0.67 not 0.66 as you would normally round up the
ReplyDelete2nd decimal place.
Actually the correct answer is 138 votes. 206/3 * 2 = 137.333. Therefore, even 137 votes would not reach the 2/3 threshold. Amazing how dumb people can be.
ReplyDeleteAll they had to do,, mentally was double the vote against, i.e.,
ReplyDelete70 X 2 = 140 > 136 so 70 has to be greater than one third of the votes and 136 is, of course, less!
My dad made me do aritmetic in my head 60 years + ago and it has stood me well over the years.
There is nothing special about 2/3 for a vote. Someone just pulled it out of their ass, since it is the next fraction up from 1/2 that has small digits. If the law uses 0.66, then that is the answer, not 2/3.
ReplyDeleteThe only justified voting fraction is 1/2, where you could justify this fraction by lining the opponents up and having each pair kill each other, and who ever is left decides the result. There is nothing magical about 2/3 as a "fair" vote.
Paul has a good point, but before he can call people dumb, he should check his equation: It is 206*2/3, not 206*3/2. :)
Mark, before you correct my equation, check what I actually wrote. Mine is still right because I divided before I multiplied. Not a big deal; I just think backwards.
ReplyDeleteBut you're right that I shouldn't be calling people dumb.
Also, I love this blog.
Oops. Who's dumb now?
ReplyDelete