We recently had our local “Municipal” elections this past November 7^th for our five Town Commissioners. We had only six candidates running for these five positions, and three of the candidates were incumbent commissioners… Nationally, incumbents are reelected 95% of the time… which in essence, broke this election down to three new people running for two open seats.

Out of our 900 residents, 447 showed up to vote in this off-year election… a 53% turn out which is very good by todays standards.

Each voter had five votes/choices to select from the six candidates in this race, creating a vote pool of 2,235 (447voters X 5 choices = 2,235 maximum votes to be cast pool) … However, only 1,593 votes were cast, a short fall of 642 Votes, what happened?

Enter the “NOT” vote in any elections format that…

Enter the “NOT” vote in any elections format that allows/requires that multiple candidates be selected… Schools boards, Town commissioners, planning boards etc., etc.

The goal here is to upset the balance of OTHER people’s vote, by “not” casting all of yours in a multiple-choice format… It’s a “Denominator/Numerator” mathematical thing that is (unfortunately) perfectly legal. The idea is that if I vote for my two or three favorite candidates, I increase their base totals (my vote goes in their bucket) … then I do NOT cast any of my remaining choices… thereby decreasing their base totals (fewer overall votes in their buckets).  My “goal” here is to make MY vote count more… and YOURS count-less.

It is a hard-to-understand mathematical equation (face it, many of us didn’t pay attention in math class) but it does tilt things… What bothers me is that it throws the lower half of the ballot into a game of complete random chance. In this election with only “extra” candidate, the effect of the 642 NOT votes was minimal in the outcome… but made this form of fraud, much easier to See.

Our highest vote getter was 292 votes out 447… Our lowest was 246 out of 447, a difference of only 46 votes!! Those 642 “Not Votes” could have obviously changed the outcome of the election 14 times over (46 vote difference /642 “not” votes = 13.956.) In our case, so many people were “Not Voting” for this person or that person… the net affect was small and the races remained “tight”.

The spread of chaos gets worse as more candidates enter the race… this causes the Numerator (number of candidates) to expand while at the same time causing the Denominator (number of votes cast) to decrease… Does your head hurt yet?

“To Me” this practice is unethical, and a perversion/corruption of my (our) civic duties/responsibilities. It is in fact, a Legel form of cheating, and by direct extension the people who practice it are Cheaters, attempting to leverage their votes over other citizen’s votes through a form of “votes” (not voter) manipulation.

I can understand “Voter Frustration” and maybe we should include a “None of the Above” option and if that gets a majority of votes… we need to reshuffle the deck and have another election.

 In the in between, “I believe,” that we should accept and respect the dignity and honor of our unique “right to vote” even if that means holding your nose as you vote for your bottom candidate choice… doing so removes you from the fear that cheaters and manipulators live in… never trusting God, The Process or their Neighbors… to do “The Right Thing” (at least, according to them).