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Health & Fitness

Final Thoughts on the School Board Election

Breaking down the numbers.

"Marvin....What do we do now?"  - Bill McKay (played by Robert Redford), in The Candidate.   

(Great movie, by the way - a must see if you haven't yet.) 

Congratulations to Jen Hebert and Adam Spector, our two newest members of the school board.  I don't envy you the position you are now in, given the storm clouds coming down from Albany.  But you've got a district filled with some real talent, talent that will gladly serve if called upon to do so.  Be the trustees that you promised you would be, build those bridges and bring us all together.   

Find out what's happening in Huntingtonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Before we put this election to rest, here are a few things to ponder - especially if you're an election buff like me:

Bullet Voting is Dead.  Wow, what a turnabout.  If we assume that the total number of votes on the budget is our total number of people who voted, then nearly everyone voted for two candidates.  There were only 170 possible "uncast" votes for a candidate; last year there were 1,646.  That's less than two and a half percent of the total possible votes.  And it's a 90percent drop from last year, almost a 90 percent drop from the average of the previous three elections.  I'd like to think it's because we discussed the phenomenon.  Or it may have been 'block voting' - virtual tickets of candidates who drew upon the same base.  Making our five person race really a faceoff between two sets of two candidates.  Without interviewing everyone who voted, there's really no way to tell.

Find out what's happening in Huntingtonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Ballot Order is Overblown.  Another subject that came up in the campaign was whether the order of the candidates on the ballot as an effect on the outcome of the election.  It didn't last year, as Adam Spector lost despite having the first slot - Rich McGrath had the most votes from the second slot.  It didn't seem to play a role now, either.  This year Adam had the fourth slot, and won.  Jen Hebert had the second slot and won, while Bill Dwyer had the first slot and lost.  In South Huntington, the winners were Lisa Brieff, who did get the most votes and had the first slot, and Jim Kaden, the incumbent, who had the last (fourth) slot.  So it seems ballot order wasn't a factor.

Impact of Union Endorsements is Unclear.  In Huntington, the two candidates endorsed by the teachers' union did win, but the impact is unclear.  The timing of the endorsement raised questions, coming as it did the night before the election, when most of the electorate was likely already set.  The endorsement, though accompanied by phone calls, was not given in the usual amount of time to be presented in the media or in printed campaign material.  There's no way to judge its effect.  In South Huntington, the endorsements came in the more traditional manner, put out in a letter on May 11, roughly a week before the election.  One of the union's endorsed candidates won, the other did not.  Jim Kaden, the winner who did not receive the endorsement, did get a 'back-handed' compliment from union, which said in its letter, "If he were re-elected to his position, it would not be a tragedy."  High praise, indeed.

Turnout Was Down Compared to Last Year.  Turnout was down about sixteen percent from last year.  It's hard to know if it was the rain, which certainly didn't help, or the lack of a 'hot button' issue like the sixth grade center controversy, or maybe it was 'crisis fatigue' given the past year or so.  However, it was still up roughly a third over previous years, so maybe the electorate is more engaged.  And that is a good thing.

How Much Did It All Cost?  Those lawn signs seemed to be everywhere, even if the ones alleged to be stolen were in fact swiped.  Bumper stickers, color mailings, flyers, online ads, half-page ads in the papers - did it seem to be a lot more of it all this year?  Maybe it was just the number of candidates.  We won't know until the final reports are filed and someone FOILs the forms.  But I am curious.

Biggest Disappointment Not Related to Our Race:  Samantha Smith, the nineteen-year-old who challenged the two incumbents for a seat on the Harborfields school board didn't win.  I was kinda hoping she would.  She wouldn't have been the youngest board member ever, though.  State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli ran for a seat on the Mineola school board while a senior in high school in 1972, at the age of 18.  There was a legal dispute then over whether you had to be 21 to hold public office.  DiNapoli later told the New York Times, "They decided to let the election go ahead, I'm sure under the theory that I was not going to win anyway."  He won and served for a decade. 

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