Judge Samuel Seabury (1895-1958) quelled power of Tammany Hall and innovated an unusual PR system for NYC elections

Seabury was a NYC lawyer judge and unsuccessful political candidate.

(he was elected as a judge but was not a politician if you mean a legislator.

He was a failed political candidate in that way - never elected to a legislative position.)

In 1938 Seabury compiled a genealogical study of his ancestry, ''Captain Henry Martin Beare (1760-1828), life, ancestry, and descendants.'' <ref>online: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89060749744&seq=6</ref>

Legal, judicial and political career

In 1905, Seabury ran for the [[New York Supreme Court]] (actually a trial court) on the [[Municipal Ownership League]] ticket headed by [[William Randolph Hearst]] for Mayor, but was unsuccessful. The book he authored that year - ''Municipal ownership and operation of public utilities in New York City'' - defended his stand in favor of municipal ownership. <ref>online: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hb1xi7&seq=7</ref>

In 1906, he ran again for the [[New York Supreme Court]], this time on the [[United States Democratic Party|Democratic]] and [[Independence League]] fusion ticket headed by Hearst for Governor, and was elected to a fourteen-year term.

In 1907 he authored the book The law and practice of the City Court of the city of New York.<ref>online: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32437121283648&seq=7</ref>

In 1930–1932, Seabury was lead investigator on the [[Hofstadter Committee]] (sometimes called the Seabury Investigations), a joint legislative committee that investigated corruption in New York's municipal courts and police department. The Committee called more than a thousand witnesses. The investigations forced [[Jimmy Walker]] out of the office of [[Mayor of New York City]].

Seabury helped write the committee's reports, ''In the matter of the investigation of the Magistrates' courts in the First judicial department and the magistrates thereof, and of attorneys-at-law practicing in said courts'' and ''The Magistrates court; report of a special committee of the City club. Recommendations of Hon. Samuel Seabury and Reorganization committee carefully analyzed''.<ref>https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951002583285t and https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044032205783</ref> In 1932, Seabury received [[The Hundred Year Association of New York]]'s Gold Medal Award "in recognition of outstanding contributions to the City of New York."

Seabury innovated a form of proportional representation that NYC adopted for city elections in 1937 and used for several elections.

<ref>Lindsay Rogers, "PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AN ANALYSIS OF THE RECORD; The Proposal Made by Judge Seabury for New York Is Weighed In Connection With the Experience of Eight American Cities", New York Times, Jan 8, 1933 https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/08/archives/proportional-representation-an-analysis-of-the-record-the-proposal.html accessed 2026-05-13</ref><ref>"Proportional Representation in NYC", https://fairvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Proportional-Representation-in-NYC.pdf</ref>

Lindsay Rogers  "PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AN ANALYSIS OF THE RECORD; The Proposal Made by Judge Seabury for New York Is Weighed In Connection With the Experience of Eight American Cities"

https://www.nytimes.com/1933/01/08/archives/proportional-representation-an-analysis-of-the-record-the-proposal.html

This interesting article by Lindsay Rogers describes how PR had already been cancelled in several cities by 1933 but also how Seabury pushed through and innovated a form of STV that used a uniform quota and he and others convinced New York City to use it.

(I am still not sure how the uniform quota/STV combo worked -- how did the uniform quota operate as a hard threshold when each borough was given a certain number of seats based on the same quota.)

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Seabury supplied the foreword to George H. Hallett, Jr.'s 1937 book Proportional Representation, in which he claimed that New York's adoption of proportional representation would do away with gerrymandering, break the monopoly held by the party machine, and secure independence of choice to every voter, and other good things.^[1]

a copy of Hallett's book with Seabury's forward is available online at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015022416187&seq=10 Proportional elections (talk) 15:37, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

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