Dick Spotswood: "Statistical nuances and other lessons of Nov. 8"

December 15, 2005

Dick Spotswood's column in the December 4 Marin Independent Journal column includes a number of interesting notes on the November 8 election. Among them:

Voters are frugal with their votes. In multi-person city council and special purpose districts' races, each voter is allowed to cast as many ballots as there are seats up for grabs. Yet some people chose to cast a "single shot," voting for only one candidate in a multi-person race when they had the option of voting for two or more. In Mill Valley, 2,745 of the 17,964 voters cast a ballot for only one candidate. Likewise, in San Anselmo, 3,896 Hub City residents voted for just one or two candidates, when they were eligible to cast three votes in the contest for three seats on the town council.

On December 9, the Independent Journal ran this letter to the editor (the text has disappeared from the paper's web site):

Columnist Dick Spotswood (Dec. 4) notes that in multiseat city council and district board elections, "some people chose to cast a "single shot," voting for only one candidate in a multiperson race when they had the option of voting for two or more." He doesn't explain why this is often rational given our current voting methods.


If your favorite candidate is not expected to win easily, and the other candidates you support are expected to do better than your favorite, then your second and third votes can help prevent your favorite from winning. In this situation you should "bullet vote" even though the strategy is insincere.
The need to put strategy ahead of voting your true preferences isn't the only problem with this "vote-for-N" method of filling multiple seats at once - or even the most important one. This method frequently allows one segment of the community to elect the entire council or board, while minority points of view go unrepresented. When there are more than two slates of candidates, this can happen even though the winning faction is less than a majority.
A far better method for at-large elections is choice voting, the multiseat sibling of instant runoff voting (IRV). Just as in IRV, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. The rankings are used to balance majority rule and representation of minority points of view. Like IRV, choice voting also creates incentives for positive campaigning, leads to higher voter turnout and minimizes the need for strategic voting.

Robert J. Richard, Kentfield

Two footnotes. The number of voters in Mill Valley was 6,424 rather than 17,964. Also, I don't agree that 3,896 San Anselmo residents voted for just one or two candidates. When exactly two seats are being filled, you can determine the number who cast only one vote by algebra. But I don't believe you can derive this number from the published results when more than two seats are being filled.

Californians for Electoral Reform (CfER) annual meeting in Sausalito May 20

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