Plenty of chatter the last two days about City Councilman Jim Clarke’s critique of bullet voting at the Culver City Democratic Club a fortnight ago, and Mr. Clarke is not altering his opinion.
“Bullet voting is a tactic that can be used to advance one candidate over another,” Mr. Clarke said this morning. “You can do it in an endorsement setting or for an election.”
Conceding that it cannot be regulated, much less outlawed, one of the two incumbents running for re-election on April 8 said bullet voting only should be employed at one clearly understood time:
“When you feel there is only one qualified candidate for a position.
“I do not think that is the case in either the Democratic Club endorsement procedure or in this election. People have choices,” said Mr. Clarke, a very seasoned member of the venerable club that dates back 63 walking for the School Board. A veteran candidate, especially given his years, to Mr. Clarke’s second birthday.
Given his long history with the club, Mr. Clarke was vexed that he placed second, and not to a veteran candidate.
He finished a narrow second in the endorsement voting behind freshman contender Christopher Patrick King. He laid the blame at the smelly toes of bullet voting. In the 40 days until Election Day, voters may forget who was first and who the runnerup because both gained the Dem Club’s endorsement.
“I realize sometimes people may only know one candidate, and vote for him or her for that reason. That particularly applies to judicial races.”
Is there any way that bullet voting can be controlled, reined in?
“In the case of the Democratic Club,” he said, “in a general election, the outcome is diluted by the number of voters. “Unless you can organize hundreds and hundreds of people to bullet vote, it will have a very minimal effect. Same way, in a Club meeting, the turnout would diminish it. The problem was exacerbated at the endorsement meeting because of the timing of the arrival of the club newsletter. When I got home from the meeting, the newsletter just then was in my mailbox.
“Only 58 ballots were cast at the meeting, about half of what we normally get. Since there was bullet voting that night, those bullet votes accounted for 30 percent of the total vote. That is significant, and it had an impact on it.
“If,” said Mr. Clarke, “we had had a normal audience, the impact would have been about 15 percent of the vote, and it would not have had as much significance.
“The Democratic Club wants to make an endorsement. They need to be able to have 60 percent. When you bullet vote and only vote for one candidate, that hurts the club’s ability to endorse a second candidate. The ballot has to be counted, but it doesn’t go toward any other candidate to get the second endorsement.”
