Changing Bullets, Who Would Have Won?

The actual vote tally to date in Tuesday’s School Board election is:

Dr. Kelly Kent,   1888

Anne Burke, 1461

Scott McVarish,   1228

The total number of ballots cast was 2957.

Running the gross total numbers, if there were 2957 ballots cast, the maximum number of total votes in the election would be 5914 (2957 x 2).  Combining the three candidates’ total votes equals 4577 total votes cast.

Therefore, assuming that everyone who voted, voted for at least one candidate (a safe assumption – or else why bother to vote?), there were 1337 bullet votes.

For this demonstration, I am going to assume

1. Every bullet vote was for Dr. Kent (not likely, but this gives Mr. McVarish the benefit of any doubt), and
2.  Bullet voters would cast their votes in direct proportion for Ms. Burke and Mr. McVarish as the non-bullet voting public did.

   a.      The non-bullet voting public’s percentage (between just Ms. Burke and Mr. McVarish) was that she received 54.3 percent of the non-Kent votes and he received 45.67 percent of the non-Kent votes.

That being the hypothesis, if every bullet voter were required to vote for a second candidate, then:

• Mr. McVarish would get 611 additional votes (45.67 percent of 1,337 bullet votes)
• Ms. Burke would get 726 additional votes (54.33 percent of 1,337 bullet votes)

Using those assumptions, the final vote tallies would look like this:

Ms. Burke, 2187

Dr. Kent,   1888

Mr. McVarish,   1839

If we take the same assumptions (every bullet voter voted only for Dr. Kent, and every bullet voter was required to vote for a second candidate), and we split the vote 51 percent Ms. Burke and 49 percent Mr. McVarish, disregarding the public’s clear 8-plus-point preference for Ms. Burke over Mr. McVarish, with her getting 51 percent and him getting 49 percent of the bullet voters’ second vote, the final tallies would look like this:

Ms. Burke, 2143

Dr. Kent, 1888

Mr. McVarish,   1883

Unless Mr. McVarish could pull 49.43 percent of the bullet voters’ second vote (something that he was unable to do even among the non-bullet voters), he could not have won even if bullet voting somehow were illegal.

This election doesn’t look so much like a bullet voting-biased result, but instead more like the public in general preferring the Dr. Kent and Ms. Burke over Mr. McVarish.

That was where we started, wasn’t it?