First, a congratulations is in order to the two Working Families Party candidates who won seats on the city council–Luis Cotto and Larry Deutsch. I was beginning to wonder if the new voting system was broke until I saw their names among the elected.

Now, so much of what has been going on seems to me the exact reasons for why historically, democracy has not been the norm. Yesterday there was an “altercation” between supporters of Eddie Perez and Minnie Gonzalez. Later I read that a poll worker was telling people who to vote for and was handing out Perez literature inside of the polling place. I know that you can’t control what other people do all of the time, but these stories make me think that like-attracts-like. I have not heard anything about rabid McCauley or Milner supporters, but at every forum there were out of line Perez supporters.

But there’s also something very Shakespearean and old time authoritarianism going on too, even if this still technically is a democracy. If you are familiar with Shakespeare, an ongoing theme that does nothing more than reflect history, is that of people in power going mad with power. In Hartford, we don’t have a megalomaniac ordering the execution of anyone who disagrees, but we do have a megalomaniac (and criminal) who, through other tactics, silences dissent.

I worry that prolonged episodes of bad behavior on behalf of politicians and supporters are what will eventually be used to explain why the U.S. will forsake democracy in favor of the kind of political system that has been used for most of history.Perez’s win should be recognized as bittersweet. The Courant writes:

Still, the unofficial results showed that Perez will begin his third term with less than a majority. After winning with 8,609 votes in 2001, his totals dropped to 7,590 in 2003 and 6,453 Tuesday. His winning margin was just 1,898 votes, down from 6,746 in 2001 and 5,714 in 2003. A total of 13,213 votes were cast, representing a turnout of about 31 percent of registered voters.

Let’s not confuse a majority with the plurality. Tallying up the votes of all his opponents last night, Perez did not have a sweeping victory. The numbers show that what voters wanted was Perez out, and those votes were distributed between McCauley, Mathews, Milner, and DeJesus.