Here Is How The “At Large” Council Election Works

In response to many questions on-line, and in an effort to inform the voters in the City of Central, here is the corect information on how this Saturday's eletion for the five Council seats will work:

In plain English, any candidate receiving more than 10% of the total number of votes cast wins a seat on the Council.  Remember that each voter gets to vote for 5 candidates, so the maximum a candidate can get is 20% assuming everyone does cast 5 votes.  Then there is a runoff for any remaining seats, and the number of candidates who will be in the runoff election is twice the number of open seats.  As an example, if three candidates are elected on the first ballot and two seats remain open, the top four candidates who did not already win a seat will be in a runoff election for the two remaining seats.

There has been discussion of not casting all five of your votes so that your favorites have a better chance of being elected.  That is actually true.  However, with 28,706 votes cast in the 2006 Council race, it would take ten voters each deciding to cast only 4 votes in order to reduce the votes a candidate needs by one vote.  In other words, each vote you do not use causes your "favorite" to need 1/10th of a vote less to get elected.  Is that a good trade-off for not getting to voice your opinion on the remaining candidates?  You decide.  Also, remember that the "no votes" also make it easier for your candidate's opponents to get elected.