Vote Today! Burstein for Library Trustee

[mabfan]

This is it. Today, Tuesday, May 4, 2010, is town Election Day in Brookline, Massachusetts. As I've mentioned before, I'm running for re-election for Library Trustee.

If you live in Brookline, I hope you'll cast one of your four votes for me.

Nomi and I and our volunteers will be out at the polling places today, so if you see us, say hello.

And if you're a voter who is still trying to make up your mind, feel free to visit my website to learn all about what I've done for the library in my first two terms as a Library Trustee:

Burstein for Brookline

Comments

[klingonguy.livejournal.com]

Best of luck!

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

Good luck, sir! I'd vote for you if I could.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

"May the 4th be with you."

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

If I lived in Brookline and not Florida, I would definitely vote for you!

[abbasegal.livejournal.com]

Not being a Brookline resident, I'm not entirely sure how the voting goes, but if it is like the Newton town council (where people voted for up to two candidates, and the top two vote-receivers became councilmen), then the optimal strategy for voting for someone who only wanted to see you on the council and was indifferent as to the ranking of the other candidates would be to vote for you and nobody else.

In the Newton case with two victors it is easy to show through a contrived example. Assume there are 3 candidates, A, B, and C, and suppose there are 100 voters. Assume 60 wanted A, but were indifferent to B and C. Suppose of the remaining 40, 20 favored B and 20 favored C. If A people split the votes for the non-favored candidate, but by B and C people by unlucky coincidence each voted B and C (without really thinking about the secondary candidate), then the final tally would be A = 60, B and C = 40 + 30 = 70. So even though more people wanted A in, B and C would be sent to office. If, though, people only voted their primary choice without voting for the others, then A would get in. (Even if only the A people did that, then B and C would each only have 40 votes, so A would be in).

Now, I don't know if the Brookline vote is analogous (or even if it is if it is possible to construct such a contrived example where 4 people win, though I bet it would be), but if so then you should only vote for your favorite candidate if you have no preferences between the others.

Best of luck regardless!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

What you describe is essentially how it works in Brookline's town elections. Any number of candidates can run, and voters don't rank the candidates but vote for as many as they want up to the number of positions. In my case, there were five candidates running for four seats, and voters could vote for up to four people.

Last year we had a contested School Committee race in which two incumbents and two challengers were running for three seats. So many people supported one or the other challenger, that they did a lot of "bullet voting," voting only for the challenger they supported and just assuming that the two incumbents would get re-elected. Instead, one incumbent lost his seat – which is why I mounted such a serious campaign this year.