Three Parties Win Seats on Ypsilanti Township Park Commission Board

On November 8, voters in Ypsilanti Township in Michigan elected seven members to the Park Commission. In this partisan election, only four Democrats ran, and no Republicans ran. The Green Party ran two nominees and the Libertarian Party ran three nominees. With such a absence of major party candidates, it was inevitable that some of the minor party nominees would win, and they did. Two Greens and one Libertarian were elected. The two Greens are Shauna McNally (5,009 votes) and Stuart Collis (4,581 votes). The winning Libertarian, Elizabeth Corder, received 4,719 votes. The two losing Libertarians received 4,165 and 3,889 votes.

The four winning Democrats received these votes: 17,888; 17,544; 17,051; and 17,042. Ypsilanti Township is in Washtenaw County.


Comments

Three Parties Win Seats on Ypsilanti Township Park Commission Board — 2 Comments

  1. Quite odd.

    The whole board is elected every four years, and generally almost no one seeks re-election, other than one particular candidate. It appears that in a conventional township, that the park commission actually manages the township parks. But Ypsilanti is a charter township and the park commission becomes an advisory panel. The commission meets once per month for 30 to 45 minutes, and two commissioners attended NO meetings this year.

    In 2000, seven Democrats and one Republican ran, so a write-in candidate was also ran.

    In 2004, eleven Democrats ran with nine being nominated, and blocked the Republican incumbent from re-election.

    In 2008, two Libertarians were elected when the Democrats ran 7 candidates for 9 seats.

    In 2012, eleven Democrats ran in the primary for 9 nominations on the ballot. It is possible they did this to shut out the Libertarians.

    In 2016, the commission was reduced to seven members. Only four Democrats filed. Based on dates, it appears that three Libertarians then filed, and then two Greens. Three Democrats filed as write-ins for the primary, but Michigan has some interesting thresholds for a write-in candidate to be nominated:

    The largest of:

    a) 10 votes;
    b) 0.15% of the population of the district (not adult population, or registered voters, or votes cast for governor, but of the population. Ypsilanti Township has about 53,000 persons, so this threshold would be 80; or
    c) 5% of the votes for the primary candidate of any party for the office (if it is a multi-seat office). The top Democrat got 3491 votes, so 5% would be 175. There were 211 write-ins. If they were split three ways that would be around 70 each.

    That is a pretty tough challenge to get voters to write-in three names for a bottom of the ballot office that had four on-ballot candidates. The best strategy would be to get voters to skip the on-ballot candidates, but that would somehow lead to a conclusion that it was some sort of insurgency. So none of the declared Democratic write-ins were nominated.

    For President, Trump had 6600 votes, 800 for Johnson, and Stein 400.

    The Democrats park commission candidates had about the same number of votes as the Democratic trustee candidates. These voters had three additional votes, but might have been hesitant to use them, particularly if they were a straight-ticket voter. Straight-ticket voting can be ambiguous for multi-seat offices. You can override a straight ticket. But if there had been seven Democratic candidates, and a straight-ticket Democrat had voted for one Libertarian, which of the seven Democrats did he mean to scratch? In this case, since there weren’t seven Democrats running, three extra persons could be marked, but how many voters brought their sliderule to the voting booth?

    It is possible a relative few Democrats (10-20%) did vote for the Greens with their three extra votes, giving them the edge. Republican voters might tilt somewhat Libertarian, but those who chose to vote for anyone, might have gone ahead and used five votes on the non-Democrats, or even voted for a Democrat or two as well.

    Overall, Debbie and Gloria got more votes than David and Edward among Democratic candidates; Shauna got more votes than Stuart between the two Greens; and Elizabeth got more votes than Kalyn and Lawrence among Libertarians.

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