Ranked-Choice Result: Bridge Will Be Green

Green, Terracotta, Yellow, Buff, Teal, and Gray all lined up in the opening round, proud of their hues and eager to win.

Only one would prevail, and point the way for New Haven bridge-crossers for decades to come.

Within minutes, as votes were counted, Buff, with only seven votes from a universe of 199, dropped out first. Then Gray, which had attracted only 16 on the initial ballot, and then Yellow. By the breathless fourth round Green and Teal were neck and neck, with Terracotta making a lackluster third, with only 34 votes and lagging far behind.

“A real horse race,” noted one observer.

On the fifth and final round, Green, which had accumulated 75 votes and still trailed Teal, picked up 19 big votes from the panting challenger Terracotta, while Teal, which had begun the round leading with 84, garnered only six …

(Roll the roaring-of-the-crowd tape) … with this result: Green won the race, 94 to 90, achieving the first majority of the 184 ballots still in contention.

The contestants were colors. Neighbors were voting for which color will grace the newly rebuilt Grand Avenue Bridge.

So now, thanks to the exercise in democracy, the bridge is to be green when it re-emerges in 18 months or so from its $25 million repair and restoration.

That exciting horse race, also known as a ranked choice voting (RCV), was conducted online Friday afternoon.

The voting was hosted by city Communications Director Gage Frank, with City Engineer Giovanni Zinn doing the formal tabulating and Caleb Kleppner of MK Election Services and Fair Haven RCV proponent Pat Kane opening two batches of 199 ballots in their two separate apartments. (Click on the video to watch the full count.)

The volunteer effort was a labor of love by Kane, with the enthusiastic embrace by the city. It began more than a year ago as neighbors gathered at a series of community meetings to discuss the rehab, closing, and final look, upon completion, of a much loved bridged that is the symbol of the Fair Haven neighborhood.

In total 199 paper votes were cast over the past six or so months at two locations:Grand Apizza on the west side of the bridge and at Grand Vin on the east side.

And you didn’t have to be a near-bridge dweller to qualify.

Any New Havener could vote. Many who do not live in the immediate neighborhood did precisely that on March 6 when more than 300 people thronged the bridge and its eastern approach for a city-organized party to mark the closing of the bridge — for upwards of 18 months — set to begin on April 13.

“Given the investment the city is making in the bridge,” said Zinn, he thought it entirely appropriate that anyone who considers himself or herself a neighbor, or afficionado of the bridge, would be appropriate to vote.

Or as he put it in the tense minutes before Kane and Klepner began opening the ballots and laying them out on tables in various piles, ​“I’m excited to see what happens. You don’t want a bunch of engineers picking a color.”

Zinn had, however, expressed a thermal preference for gray at one of the initial meetings in January last year. Black traps heat and causes swelling, he said and gray was his choice.

On the other hand longtime Fair Haven activist Chris Ozyck had been a champion of the green that ultimately prevailed.

Would Zinn accept the people’s choice?

Absolutely, he said, even before the voting started, although he rued the fact that in the rush of work and cascading pandemic, he had not voted himself.

Was the vote official? Legal?

“The way to think about this,” said Kleppner, ​“is that this is an advisory vote, not legally binding.”

In a non-Covid-19 world, all the ballots would have been in one place, There would have been observers physically present. Nevertheless, Kane had invited Kleppner to her apartment by the bridge, along with other her potential observers.

He declined, writing to her, ​“I really don’t think it makes sense to have observers come to your house. It’s kind of impossible to maintain a six-foot separation when you’re in a small room.” So a few people, in addition to the participants and press, observed the process on the Zoom meeting site.

Kleppner, who consults and conducts RCV voting in many localities around the country, was careful, as was Kane, to keep all the individual ballots visible as they were placed in different piles, and moved from pile to pile throughout the process, as second and third choices were distributed until a majority was achieved.

Kane is a believer in using RCV procedures for voting on more than colors. She said she hopes that the Grand Avenue Bridge vote, posted on YouTube and FacebookLive, will help convince New Haveners that the process is more democratic than traditional simple majority votes and should be used in town for many of our elections for government office.

“If we’d gone by the first vote, it would have been Teal,” Kleppner said. RCV, by distributing voters second, third, and fourth choices after their favorites have dropped out, produced a truer majority winner, he said.

“You get a candidate who’s supported by an actual majority. And it leads to positive campaigning,” he said

Kleppner said he is going to be helping conduct upcoming primaries in Alaska, Kansas, and Wyoming, using RCV — Covid-19 permitting.

“We’re going to have a Green Bridge for the next hundred years,” Kleppner declared, as the virtual gathering wound down.

“Well, maybe 30 or so,” Zinn offered as a correction.

“This has been a fantastic opportunity to see how RCV works,” Zinn added. He said he’ll convey the results to the contractors right away.

Then he said that painting of the bridge is likely to take place not at the end of the rehab, but in the first third of the work that formally commences on April 13 with the closure.

“Stay safe,” he said to all the Zoomers watching and listening in at the meeting. ​“Soon we’ll be able to take walks and see the bridge color appearing.”