Cedarburg School Board Election Post Mortem

“You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” – Abraham Lincoln

Three incumbents ran as a bloc for three positions on the Cedarburg School Board in the election. Their campaign stance was to re-elect all three, and keep challenger Dan Carr off the school board. Each voter had the opportunity to “vote for not more than three”, but no more than one vote could be cast for any one candidate. With this election rule, those who wanted Carr on the School Board voted directly against that intent if they cast more than one vote. But it’s safe to assume that all supporters of the three incumbents cast three votes each.

[Note: Limited information was available when this article was researched and posted. Very recent information makes the convoluted analysis done here unnecessary. See comment #4 at the end of this article to get the simple, concise facts in the matter. But there are important conclusions and analyses in the latter part of this essay which are not repeated in comment #4.]

If you make the extremely unlikely assumption that EVERYONE who voted for Carr cast one vote for Carr alone, and cast no other votes (while, of course, all other voters cast three votes each for the bloc of incumbents) then Dan Carr received votes from 44 percent of all voters. (The news reports all say that Dan Carr received only 21 percent.)

Very few people who persist in voting cast just one vote when they are entitled to three. Let’s assume that only HALF of ALL the 1939 people who voted for Mr. Carr cast three votes in this race.

We can assume that those Carr voters distributed their other two votes among the three incumbents and the 89 write-ins. Each incumbent then picked up 617 votes from people who voted for Dan Carr. (In other words, if half the people voting for Mr. Carr cast three votes instead of just one, and after subtracting the 89 write-in votes, then the 1850 votes those Carr voters cast, divided between the 3 incumbents, gives 617 votes to each.)

Simple arithmetic shows that there could then have been no more than 1870 votes cast for each of the bloc of three incumbents by people who DID NOT want Dan on the Board. This assumption means that 51 percent of all voters wanted Dan to have a seat on the Board. (The news reports all say that Dan Carr received only 21 percent.) 51 percent voter approval of Dan results from making the assumption that ONLY HALF of the people who voted for Dan Carr to be on the Board also cast two other votes, and that Carr voters cast ALL the write-in votes. Ask your local high school student to use the actual vote tallies and check the math.

For a final example, consider if ALL of the 1939 citizens who voted for Dan voted for three people on the ballot. In that case, Carr voters also cast 3878 votes for other candidates. People who voted for Mr. Carr would have contributed more than half of the vote totals of each of the three incumbents. The three incumbents would thus have received less than 1230 votes from people who did NOT vote for Carr, in order to get the actual totals they received that won them re-election.

1230 votes cast AGAINST Carr (and for the bloc of three incumbents). 1939 votes cast FOR Dan Carr. That represents a 61 percent voter approval for Carr to have a seat on the School Board, with only 39 percent of voters wanting all three incumbents returned to the Board! (The news reports all say that Dan Carr received only 21 percent.) And even with that kind of overwhelming approval, with these actual reported vote totals, Carr would still lose his bid for a seat on the Board… with this quirky rule.

With any realistic assumption, it’s likely that a MAJORITY of the voters in the School Board election voted in favor of Dan Carr taking a seat on the School Board, and only a minority preferred that he not be seated on the Board. (Yet, the news reports all say that Dan Carr received only 21 percent.)

Sour grapes and twisted logic? Not hardly. The strategy used by the bloc of three incumbents employed precisely this analysis, so the media can, and certainly should, shine a light on it. The incumbent School Board and their allies were obviously “unfair”, but that’s politics, and it’s perfectly legal. The math and the rule made the strategy of the bloc of three incumbents inevitable and all but insurmountable in the election.

With our strange election rule, it would have required a massive landslide for Dan to win a seat by just one vote. He didn’t get that massive landslide. As a result, the people of the Cedarburg School District still have a “unitary executive”, comprised entirely of men (but no women) with business experience alone (but none with any professional credentials or experience in the field of education), setting school policy and making decisions. And no alternative perspective whatsoever is anywhere on the current Board or Administration of this very troubled Cedarburg School District, to examine or question their unwise agenda and blundering policy decisions.

I have used actual reported election tallies in the preceding analysis. That makes it more difficult to follow the numbers. To facilitate your understanding of the basic principle involved, consider this very simple example:

Say five people voted in the school board election.
Say three people voted for Dan, and two people voted for all 3 incumbents.
That means that 60% of voters wanted Dan to be on the school board, and 40% did not.
Say all 3 who voted for Dan cast three votes, and no write-ins were cast.
Say the second and third votes cast by Carr voters were evenly divided among the other three candidates.
The “official results” would report that Dan came in dead last, with “only 20 percent of the vote.”

Here’s another example of how the math worked for the incumbent slate:

Say eight people voted in the school board election.
Say 6 people voted for Dan, and only two voted for the 3 incumbents.
Say all 6 who voted for Dan cast 3 votes, and no write-in votes were cast.
Say the second and third votes cast by Carr voters were evenly divided among the other three candidates.
Despite 75% of voters wanting Carr to be on the Board, and only 25% not wanting him on the Board, the official results would have it a four way tie, with Dan getting 25 percent of the “official” vote tally.

This problem could be prevented in the future by an election rule (already in use elsewhere) that gives each qualified voter as many votes as there are vacancies for an office, allowing the voter to assign all votes to any candidate or combination of candidates. With 3 vacancies, in other words, a voter could cast three votes for one candidate, or one vote for each of three candidates, or any combination. With that system, a voter is, of course, even permitted to make the extremely unlikely, unwise choice of casting only one vote. But, of course, nobody would do that, because nobody wants to get only one vote while other voters are happily getting three.

However, in this school board election, voters who supported the bloc of incumbents got three votes, while voters who wanted a change, and wanted Dan Carr on the school board, got only one vote (unless they made the BIG, but understandable, mistake of casting all three votes, two of which did nothing but help defeat their own preference that Dan Carr be seated on the Board.)

I suspect that whether you are in favor of this election reform depends strictly on whether you are for the Lone Ranger or you are for the Three Musketeers. Or just maybe, it depends on whether you believe in fair play on a level field.