Everybody: just breathe. No more speeches, no more waving of signs, no more antagonism — at least for a little while.
As AtomicTumor said last night: "Time to take the freaking signs down now."
I spent the late morning and early afternoon taking down my signs — feeling intensely grateful that I only put up a hundred or so, as opposed to the thousand that some candidates put out. I ran into Ray Evans at my first stop (Glenwood Elementary), where he was finishing up his sign collection, having started about 6:30 this morning. Tom Hayes must have gotten an early start too, because there were precious few of his left anywhere in town.
My sign man still has the list of signs in people’s yards, but those I could remember to check were mostly already down. I took the ones that weren’t, and hope that everyone else who has one will just put it away.
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HWTFM was (being a numbers geek, much like yours truly) intensely interested in knowing how many people cast single-shot votes in the City Council race. Given that he hangs with a slightly different crowd than I do in his civic activities — much more in touch with the environmentalists than I am — it seems he’d heard quite a bit about a single-shot undercurrent.
6,414 people voted; there were 16,304 votes cast in the City Council election, leaving an average of 2.5 votes cast in that race per voter. There’s no way to assess how many cast only one vote, since some may have voted only for two… but it’s enough of a discrepancy for me to believe that there was some of that going on. In the school board race, the average was 1.6 votes cast per voter.
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Early voting hit a new record this year: 3,005 of 6,414 (46.8%). However, it was only a 32.6% voter turnout — perhaps high for city election standards, but dismally low overall in my opinion.
For the rest of the day, I will take my kids to the pool, read a book, and prepare a nutritious home-cooked meal for my family — something they haven’t had much of lately. It’s good to be back to normal.
[.]
Regarding numbers, it appears to me that in an at-large race the vast majority of Oak Ridgers use all of their available votes. This pattern did not change much at all between 2005 and 2007. In 2005, when there were 4 City Council seats up for election, 85.8% of the available votes were used, or 3.4 votes per voter. (See the election results on my website — scroll down toward the bottom.)
I’ve talked to more than a few local voters who worry that their ballots could be invalidated unless they use all of their allotted votes. Thus, if the ballot says “Vote for three,” most Oak Ridgers obey.
Making use of all votes is fine when voters are sure of all their choices (many are), but I think it’s unfortunate when a voter plays “eeny-meeny-miney-moe” to finish filling out their ballot. Their random choices just might end up beating their preferred candidates.
Theres no excuse for voting without researching. If there are three votes, I feel obligated to do enough research to choose three candidates, or at least three lesser-of-(x)-evils.