As mid-evening changed to late night, Scott McVarish intently was studying the bulletin board that, for hours, merely listed the absentee vote count:
Anne Burke, 773
Scott McVarish, 599
Prof. Kelly Kent, 977
Analyzing his chances in the two-seat School Board race, Mr. McVarish, the third place finisher, concluded that more than 80 percent of Dr. Kent’s votes – 800 out of 977 – resulted from bullet voting, a piping hot topic in Culver City, probably for days to come.
“Now those are the motivated people,” he said.
“The rest of the night, it’s going to shrink. If there is a big turnout, it is going to shrink enough” that he believed he could overcome the steep deficit.
Pointing at the Dr. Kent line on the board, Mr. McVarish declared that “the most highly motivated partisan voters are right here.
“The rest of voters will just be normal people who probably will vote for two candidates.
“Right now,” he said, “there are 1600 ballots. Half of them bullet voted. The rest of the night, you are not going to see the same proportion.
“But whether I can catch up depends on the voter turnout,” Mr. McVarish said. He finished 660 votes behind Dr. Kent and 233 behind his teammate Ms. Burke.
“So far, bullet voting has beaten the slate,” said Mr. McVarish.
“There are two opposing strategies.
“Here it is slate,” he said, pointing at the Burke-McVarish totals.
“Here it is bullet voting,” he said while aiming at the Kent line.
“Bullet voting is a strategy, and it looks like a very good strategy.”
Is bullet voting a fair strategy?
“It’s an election,” Mr. McVarish said crisply. “The only thing that is fair is who wins.”
He flashed a wide, easy smile. “Winning is what proves what is fair.”
Casting aside the question of whether dissecting the data increased or shrank his hopes, Mr. McVarish said that as an analyst, “these numbers are pretty unemotional for me.
“The question is not whether there is hope. It is just an interesting challenge of two opposing strategies. We will see.”
With an estimated 50 percent of absentee voters opting to bullet vote, to Mr. McVarish “that means they were well-organized.”
Better organized than the Burke-McVarish team?
He laughed good naturedly.
“That we will know by the end of the night,” he said.
I actually like this piece. It’s honest and vulnerable. I have learned so much about politics this election, I never even knew what bullet voting was until today, and I look forward to learning more.
Where there are two open seats in a school board race, running a slate with two candidates is essentially asking the slate supporters to do “bullet voting.” Just two barrels instead of one. There are advantages to running a slate, but more so where the individual candidates on a slate draw from different groups of supporters so that the sum is greater than the parts, and the financial and human resource savings by having one set of signs, etc. instead of two. However, as this election shows, a slate has its down sides, as well, especially where both slate candidates draw chiefly from a common group of supporters. In addition, by having lawn signs and mailers with two names (Burke and McVarish), those who primarily supported Kelly Kent would have had to distinguish between Scott and Anne, and by running as a slate, they made it difficult to distinguish between them for many voters, I suspect. I think the voters showed great wisdom by electing two women, each with single syllable last names, in what became a surname battle. Clearly, the current school board has soured voters on three-syllable surname candidates.
Hmmm. I wonder how Meghan Sali-Wells or on a national scale, Barack Obama would feel about that reasoning. I have never heard of multi-syllabic surname discrimination. Perhaps this is a secret wide-held by single-syllable surname-hokders
Holders not hodkers. Surely this was in jest. I hope!
Jeannine, just between the two of us, please don’t tell anyone else, I was born Herskovtiz. I’m only passing. I think it’s brave that you’re using your former name even when you married out of the class of discriminatees. (I am making some assumptions here.)
The first, early county election release showed the voting by Mail results. Scott McVarish had received 61.3% of the vote received by Ms Kent: 599 divided by 977. In the unofficial totals released the next day, Mr McVarish had received 1461 votes to Ms Kent’s 1888 for 77.4%.
Precincts 1 and 3 located in East Culver City, provided Ms Kent with 45% of her first place margin of victory.
What makes these two precincts standout is that an average of 60% of the ballots cast, had only one vote. It is also note-worthy that Ms Kent appeared on over 3/4 of the ballots cast and received more than twice as many votes as her two rivals combined.
Talk about being motivated!
Slate voting is the antithesis of bullet voting. Bullet voting has long been a part of Culver City politics, just not so openly acknowledged or practiced on such a large scale (assuming the scale indicated in the article here). Slates are relatively new.
Bullet voting is intentionally casting fewer votes than allowed. For example, in this election, bullet votes would be voting for just one candidate instead of two. OTOH, slate voting is typically casting all of your votes, but for a specific set of candidates instead of deciding each vote independently. For example, suppose Prof. Kent ran with another candidate on a slate. Then, there would be two slates, each hoping voters would vote both votes for their slate instead of casting one vote for a candidate from each slate.
Wasn’t following this race closely and I’m in the precinct 1 and 3 area. I noticed that Kelly had a presence (walked and dropped, and signs) whereas Burke and McVarish not really. Could be those areas just responded to Kelly’s campaign presence.
Also, the polling place was a mile or so outside of city limits and incredibly difficult and time-consuming to get to during the morning. That could not help election day turnout, making absentee ballots from there more important. It would be interesting to see if it was lower than previous races.