On March 2, a settlement was reached in the 2024 lawsuit Clarke v Newburgh. This has been a lawsuit to overturn Newburgh’s method of electing its five Town Board members. The old method elected all five at-large. Under the settlement, Newburgh will elect them using the type of proportional representation that is called “single transferable vote.” See this explanation of that term.
The lawsuit had been filed in state court, and depended on New York state law that protects representation for racial and ethnic minorities. Newburgh had tried to defend itself by arguing that the state law violated the U.S. Constitution, but that attempt failed in November 2025.
Sounds like fraud.
Any indication which quota they’re going to use? Droop or Hare? If it’s Droop that means any candidate over 16.67% of the total votes cast would get a seat (as the link in the post alludes to). Hare would be 20% of the total votes cast get a seat (Threshold = total votes / seats).
We don’t care Stock.
Alden James isn’t stock.
The case involves the Town of Newburgh, which is legally distinct from the City of Newburgh. The town will also pay legal fees of $1.6 million to plaintiff’s lawyers.
Under the New York law potential plaintiffs inform the local government of their violation of law, and unless they capitulate within a certain time period they go ahead with a lawsuit. Newburgh had argued the the New York statute violated the US Constitution which the district court (“Supreme Court” in New York) agreed with. This was appealed and overturned, which was affirmed by New York’s highest court (Court of Appeals). The case was about to go to trial on remand.
I could not find a settlement document. Currently, Newburgh has a town supervisor elected biennially; and four town council members elected for four-year terms, two at each biennial elections. The supervisor is an ex officio member of the town council. I’m not sure the town could agree to shift the supervisor to an ordinary member of the council. If they switched to electing the four council members at one time, that would truncate the terms of the two elected in 2025, it would also make possible a total replacement of the council, when the intent may be to have a continuing body.
It is at least conceivable that they will use 2-member STV to elect one Republican and one Democrat every two years.
@Jim Riley… Or plausibly they increase the number of seats (if they can?). My personal take is that all cities and towns should use the fifth root method (population raised to 1/5) to determine number of seats, counties should be fourth root (population raised to 1/4), and state legislatures and the US House of Representatives should use the cubed root method (population raised to 1/3). Doing so would put Newburgh at 8 seats (maybe require an odd number for no chance of tied votes, so round to 9). The most recent census appears to put population at 31,985. 31,985^(1/5) = 7.96139682.
@Aiden,
New York has considerable local home rule, but changes in governance require voter approval. The Town of Newburgh could have switched to STV or changed the size of its town council. In a case like this it may be possible to bypass the people (after all it is for their own good) and impose a change in government structure.
The gist of the higher court’s decision was that the Town of Newburgh could not sue the State of New York under most circumstances. One of those where they might be able to is where they were forced to assign voters to districts on the basis of race. As Thomas Jones has pointed out numerous times, you can’t operated segregated schools. You also can not draw attendance boundaries that have the same effect. But the New York statute provides alternatives to race-based districting, including RCV, limited, and cumulative voting.
Two Democrats, including one Black, were elected to the town council in 2025, after the lawsuit had been filed. The town could have argued that the reason that no candidates preferred by minorities had been elected was that they had rarely tried. With the lawsuit underway, they may have put in more effort to produce evidence. The plaintiffs would have had to make their argument based on exogenous results (e.g., minority voters preferred Biden to Trump in 2020).
They may decide to keep the partisan primaries, and perhaps have con-fusion for the general election, where a voter can rank 1. Democrat Doe, 2. Republican Roe, 3. Working Families Doe, 4. Conservative Roe.
The town supervisor is paid $145,000 so it is an actual job, and is why it is unlikely to be subordinated into an ordinary town council member. The mayor of the city of Newburgh is paid $22,000, which is only a few thousand more than city council members make, so it is more a ceremonial role. The Newburgh city manager is paid over $200,000.
Jerry is correct.