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Sunday, March 22, 2015

Choose Only One for Village Trustee. (Then Discard the Other Three Votes).

As the Arlington Heights Village Trustee election approaches on April 7, residents who care enough to vote are trying to decide which trustees to vote for. During Village Trustee elections, voters can legally cast four votes for four trustee candidates. Not even in Chicago could a voter get away with this.

The theory behind getting four votes is that, because there are four trustee seats open, the voter should be able to vote for a candidate for each open seat, hence four votes for four candidates. In regular elections the voter gets one vote for one candidate that he or she prefers to fill an office.

However, a voter that utilizes all four votes almost guarantees the preferred candidates of the 'block' will win (see previous post on Bullet voting vs. Block voting). If a voter prefers one trustee, but then decides to cast their other three votes, in effect they have just voted against their preferred candidate three times. The candidates with the four highest vote totals will be elected.


In order to eliminate the block voting impact, voters should consider voting for just one trustee candidate only and throwing away their remaining three votes. By doing so local elections would become a popularity contest, as it is in regular elections, and it would also mitigate the effect of a small contingent of registered voters controlling election results. 

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