Bullet Voting Explained

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."  - Kurt Vonnegut

Whenever we have an election for two or more open seats, you may hear armchair pundits talking about the strategy of 'bullet voting.'  What are they talking about?  Bullet voting is deciding to vote for only one candidate, even though you have the opportunity to vote for more.

Why would anyone do this?  It really comes down to how you think the race is going.  If you have two favorites and believe they are going to easily win the two seats, then you should simply vote for both of them without reservation - forget about bullet voting, stop reading and eagerly await the next blog post.  :)

But what if some other candidate is running away with it?  If you believe that your favorite candidate, your first choice, is not going to win the most votes  but stands a good chance of grabbing second place (and the second seat), then yes, you should bullet vote for her.  Don't risk elevating a potential rival.

Why?  Well let's say we have three candidates running for two seats:  Tom Huntington, Billy Halesite and Mary Melville.  It doesn't matter whether we're talking about the School Board election, coming up on May 17th, or the Town Council election in November - they both operate the same way.  You get to vote for two of the candidates to fill two seats.

Let's say you are wild about Mary Melville and cast a vote for her.  You also kind of like Billy Halesite, so you vote for him as well.  Your neighbor doesn't think much of Mary Melville, so he votes for Tom Huntington and Billy Halesite - emphatically voting for anyone other than Mary Melville.  The question is, did you weaken your support for Mary Melville by voting for Billy Halesite as well?  And your neighbor, did he dilute his support for Tom Huntington in the same way?  Well, let's see:  Between the two of you, the election stands at one vote for Mary Melville, one vote for Tom Huntington, and two votes for Billy Halesite, who was no one's first choice.  Great for Billy Halesite; not so good for your favorite, Mary Melville.

Proponents of bullet voting say that you should only vote for your first choice, Mary Melville - essentially throwing your second vote away.  In our example, the election would then stand at one vote apiece for each of the candidates.  What you are hoping for is that enough of your friends do the same thing.  If all of the Mary Melville supporters vote only for her, and a few of the supporters of some of the other candidates include Mary Melville as one of their two votes, then there's a good chance that the candidate you are wild about will garner enough votes in relation to the other candidates to win one of the seats.

If on the other hand, you believe the second seat comes down to a toss-up between your beloved Mary Melville and someone you absolutely can't stand, then you should not bullet vote.  This is especially true in races with a lot of candidates.  Vote for Mary Melville and a second or third favorite, and hope that if your much-adored Mary Melville doesn't win, at least someone you can tolerate gets that second seat.

Does anyone do this?  Apparently.  If you look at last year's SD#3 school board election, where we also got to choose two candidates, it was significant.  There were roughly 4,100 votes cast on the budget, and if everyone who voted on the budget voted for two Trustees, that means there were 8,200 possible votes for candidates.  Yet only about 6,600 votes were, in fact, cast for a candidate.  Clearly a lot of people bullet voted or perhaps they were unaware they could choose two candidates.  Remember, the two candidates for the last seat were separated by just four votes, and yet there were over 1,600 possible votes that weren't cast.  These voters took the time to go to the polls and vote on the budget question, and yet opted not to vote for all the candidates to which they were entitled.  I find that interesting.  For those of you in the South Huntington district, there were about 1,400 possible votes that weren't cast for a candidate, but your races mercifully weren't as close.

Does bullet voting work?  Probably not, but that is a matter of much debate.  Without knowing how everyone actually votes, it's hard to measure.  I'd love to hear from anyone planning on bullet voting; or if you want to wait until after the election is over, please tell me why you did and if you think it helped.