Fractions at the Delegate Assembly

Some teachers tell kids “fractions are your friends” but in the United States that’s often not the case. We end up with a lot of adults who feel uncertain around them. How many jokes do we have? ” rds of Americans don’t get fractions.” Or the old A&W “third pounder” story (short version: Americans didn’t choose the pounder over the pounder because 3 is less than 4. Seriously.)

Lots of people, kids and adults, learn to avoid fractions. One trick is to ask someone else to handle them. Another is to work in percentages instead. Calculators give percents. Their form, a two-digit number, makes them easier to compare than fractions. How many of our neighbors are unsure which of and is greater? But express them as 60% and 62.5%, and people are more comfortable drawing a conclusion.

Most elections work with the idea of “majority” – and there can be fuzziness about what that means. I have heard “51%” which is not right. A majority means more than . If there are 25 votes, 12.5 would be one half, so 13 constitutes a majority. Elections with more candidates can get complicated.

Even simpler are up or down votes. These typically require a majority. Exactly half the votes are not enough. (But don’t say “half plus one” – as you can see above, a majority of 25 is not . A majority of 25 is more than , and the next whole number is 13.) Another way to look at it is, are there more yes votes than no votes? The math is the same.

But is not the only fraction. Some votes require a rds vote. That means exactly , or more. The good news is, we do not need to calculate to see if we have a rds vote.

If 30 people vote, 20 are and 20 to 10 would be a rds vote. If 12 people vote, 8 are and 8 to 4 would be a rds vote. If 3 people vote, 2 would be , and 2 to 1 would be a rds vote.

Votes	Yes	No
30	20	10
12	8	4
3	2	1
600	400	200
3n	2n	1n

Can you figure out why twice as many yes votes as no votes makes exactly rds? This fact makes it kind of easy to see if a vote has been met. Are there at least twice as many yes votes as no votes? And this really is simpler than dealing with percents and their insidious rounding issues.

This also gets to the heart of “Why rds?” This gives us exactly two people saying yes for each one saying no. It is the most natural definition of an overwhelming yes vote.

Last Wednesday at the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Delegate Assembly, fractions became an issue. Unity, the caucus that controls the union, has had to navigate carefully to get resolutions passed this year – usually getting just one through each Delegate Assembly. And last Wednesday their focus was likely going to be the two endorsement resolutions, for City Council, and for Borough Presidents. You’d think they would have made those resolutions #1 and #2 so they could get to them. Nope. They had something else in mind.

Unity managed back in January to place an “outside interference” resolution on the agenda. It’s classic, disgusting redbaiting. But in this election, Unity was also aiming it at the leader of the NYCOPSR who has been backing the acb group in the election. Unity wanted this. Desperately. But Unity has not been winning all the votes… Most contested votes have been won with less than 60%, in either direction. And so Unity has avoided letting the “outside interference” reso come up. They weren’t sure they had the numbers.

But May was different. For the May DA Unity did a hard push to get their delegates to attend. And knowing that they had mobilized and had the numbers, they wanted to pass their contentious redbaiting resolution, and also get both of their endorsement resolutions up for votes, and passed. So Mulgrew shortened his report. That’s a big deal. He usually takes a report that he delivers in 15 minutes at the UFT Executive Board and extends it to an hour at the Delegate Assembly, to eat up time, and to keep motions and debate from occurring. It’s a control mechanism.

So Mulgrew’s report was done in 29 minutes – to leave time for the “outsiders” resolution and both the endorsement resolutions. But they weren’t certain that was enough. So during “Motions Directed to the Agenda” (sometimes incorrectly called “the new motion period” because that’s mostly what comes up), Academic HS VP Janella Hinds was recognized, and moved to extend the meeting until those 3 resolutions were completed.

Now, a motion directed to this month’s agenda takes a rds vote. People voted on the phone. People voted in the room. And the parts were announced. On the phone 593 in favor, 279 opposed. In the room 203 in favor, 120 opposed. Most delegates waited to hear what that meant.

Not me. Those opposed numbers, 279 and 120, sweet. Easy to add (no carries). That’s 399. And I know (and if you were reading closely above, you do too) that for it to be rds there should be twice as many yeses as nos. And twice 399 (that’s one less than 400, so twice should be two less than 800) is 798. But 593 +203 is 796, not enough.

The numbers announcer declared “67 percent, it passes” but I already knew it didn’t and objected “that’s not two-thirds. It’s like 66.5 percent rounded up.” My voice was heard by enough people. It could not be ignored. But really, it was the math talking.

There was a hubbub. Someone (was it Mulgrew?) stated that 66.5% is exactly rds. (It’s not. The percent equivalent of rds is 66.6666….%). Turns out, by the way, that it was 66.61. Pretty close. But if we had a resolution with 49.89%, do you think Mulgrew would have given it to us? Pretty close doesn’t cut it for or for rds. So there was some yelling and screaming. A Unity full-timer yelled at me that it was close enough. Right. And then the numbers guy carefully did the calculation, and it was short, and that was it.