[Editor’s Note: Mr. Silbiger was a strategist with the successful Nancy Goldberg-for-School Board campaign.]
Regarding the discussion about bullet voting in last week’s School Board election:
The ballot specifically says “Vote for no more than 2 candidates.”
I am not an English major, but I believe that the statement means that you can choose to vote for either 1 or 2 candidates, with both being equally legal and moral.
This is sour grapes, pure and simple [the implication that top votegetter Nancy Goldberg, on whose committee Mr. Silbiger served, benefitted disproportionately from bullet voting].
There is nothing wrong with bullet voting.
It is just as legitimate a vote as is voting for 2 candidates.
If anyone has proof of the opposite, I hope they will share it rather than writing pure conjecture with no support.
How critical was it to Nancy's victory?
There is no way of knowing who the bullet voters voted for.
My guess (and it is completely a guess with nothing to back it up) is about one-third of her votes were bullet votes.
My further guess is that it is a mix of all 5 candidates. However, I think it is possible (maybe even probable) to assume that Nancy received more bullet votes than did the other candidates.
This is NOT due to anything that the candidate or her committee did.
I was at nearly every committee meeting.
There never was a mention of asking our supporters to bullet vote (although we would have been perfectly okay to do that).
Many of Nancy's supporters (including myself) endorsed other candidates.
My guess as to why Nancy probably got more bullet votes is that she brought in a lot of new voters to this election (including former students and their parents).
They knew no one else on the ballot except for Nancy.
Again, is it wrong for them to vote for the 1 and only candidate that they know?
Of course not.
I hope that we can move on to legitimate conversation and not a continuation of this fabricated ridiculousness.
Mr. Silbiger, a member of the School Board and President of the Democratic Club, may be contacted at ksilbiger@juno.com
