Scot - I wish I could explain it better. In my town, we have a 9-person town council and, by state law, no more than 6 can be from the same party. So far, so good.
The problem is that everyone gets to vote for 6 people, the number each party can nominate, and it looks like a large percentage of people vote pretty close to the party line. I assume Port Chester used to be similar before the judge intervened.
The reason I say most people seem to stay close to the party line is that is that there is remarkably little difference between the number of votes that the most popular candidate and the least popular candidate of each party get. There can be a big difference between the parties. If the most popular D got 10,000 votes, the least popular probably got 8,000 and the same kind of ratio will happen with the R candidates. I think the reason is that each party's slate is selected by that party's town committee and dissenting points of view are not welcome. All the Ds all say X and the Rs all say Y. Actually, what the Ds say isn't that different from what the Rs say, except for some social issues and the associated spending.
I believe that if we could only vote for one person, not 6, the top one or two candidates of each party would win easily, but the rest would be in the race of their lives with Conservatives, Greens, Libertarians, Socialists or whatever. If we still were given 6 votes, but could give as many of them to a single candidate as we want, I think we'd see the top 3 or 4 of each party win and only a couple seats would go to candidates with alternative points of view, or alternative colors of skin, for those who care more about that. That's what happened in Port Chester and, while I like it better than letting the Ds and Rs run the table, we'd be better off if each person could only vote for one candidate.
I hope this explanation is better than my previous attempts. What it comes down to is that I want a choice beyond the socially-conservative, pro-FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate industry) Rs and the socially liberal, pro-FIRE Ds. I swear that one year the only difference between the D and R town council platforms was whether gay couples should be eligible for the family discount at the town pools. Anything that helps break those parties' stranglehold is good.