Bullet Vote Arlington Heights Village Trustee Mark Walker on April 4, 2017

Bullet Vote for Village Trustee Candidate Mark Walker and Discard Other Three Votes

Mr. Tom Hayes is the uncontested candidate for village president, not mayor, in the upcoming Arlington Heights Village election on Tuesday, April 4, 2017. There are also four open village trustee seats.

The village trustee candidates are incumbents, Trustee Tom Glasgow, Trustee Jim Tinaglia, and, Trustee Bert Rosenberg. Dr. Joe Favia withdrew from the trustee race due to pressure from an inappropriate tweet and possible insider cooperation to get him on the board. 

All current trustees and the president were probably well aware of and therefore complicit to the Farwell/Favia bait and switch. Quite frankly this is probably not the first time tactics such as this have been employed. But in this case they were inadvertently exposed through an inappropriate tweet. Certainly none of this is illegal, just highly questionable.

As a result, this is a good opportunity to affect real change on the village board that will promote local democracy with the two write-in candidates for trustee, Mr. Mark Walker and Mr. Richard Baldino.

Please consider below:

The Voting Block

When Arlington Heights voters go to the polls they will have four votes for trustees and one vote for president. The 'block' consists of loyal voters who will always show up and cast all four of their trustee votes for the incumbents or for their designated replacement candidate.

Dr. Joe Favia was intended to be the replacement trustee for Trustee Joe Farwell when he decided not to run again after 16 years on the board. Depending upon the voter turn out, the estimated block is about 2,800 to 4,100 Arlington Heights voters.

For example, in a low voter turnout local election, 2015 was 12.5%, of the estimated 50,194 registered voters only 6,274 voters showed up, of which about half were block voters. This is an insurmountable head start against the challengers and why the incumbents generally win.

Everyone instinctively understands the block effect, and it is why the incumbents have a distinct advantage. This is also why some trustees have been on the board for 25 or more years and the current board has a cumulative term of over a century. The block effect is a direct affront on local democracy and a condition that term limits would attempt to solve.

In the absence of term limits, there are a couple of ways around the block effect. First, have a high local turnout that swamps the block voters. Second, bullet vote, for example, cast just one vote and discard the other three. This gives challengers an opportunity to catch up to the head start that the block gives to the incumbent or replacement candidates.

It appears that the block will encourage voters to write-in Mr. Baldino and then vote for the three incumbents. One source of how the block gets the message who to vote for is through the endorsements of the Daily Herald editorial board.

Bullet Vote Mr. Mark Walker and discard three remaining votes

In my opinion, this is not a decision of either Mr. Baldino or Mr. Walker but rather Mr. Baldino and Mr. Walker. Not everyone will bullet vote of course, but Mr. Walker is going to need about 3,500 votes just to get even with block votes to other candidates, including Mr. Baldino, to realistically compete for a seat.

Please consider bullet voting for Mr. Walker that would assist him to make up this deficit and begin to affect real change for local democracy on the Arlington Heights Village Board.