This morning, the Register-Star reported on the primary races: "Hudson, Hillsdale primaries too close to call." Oddly, they chose to accompany the article with a picture of Heather Campbell, whose 368 to 181 victory over challenger Michael Hofmann is secure. There is no way the absentee ballots could change the outcome: 163 absentee ballots were issued in Hudson, and as of Wednesday 110 were returned. Hofmann, however, was cross-endorsed by the Working Families Party, so his name will appear on that line on the ballot in November.
The race for supervisor in the Second Ward seems equally determined by Tuesday's results, with incumbent Abdus Miah receiving 120 votes and challenger Tiffany Garriga receiving 30. Ninety-six absentee ballots were issued to Second Ward voters, and as of Wednesday 83 had been returned--not enough to change the outcome. Like Hofmann, Garriga has been cross-endorsed by the Working Families Party, so her name will appear on that line on the ballot in November.
The absentee ballots could change the outcome in the race for Second Ward alderman. On Tuesday night, incumbent Dewan Sarowar led with 107 votes, followed by Mohammed Rony with 83 and Willette Jones with 45. Ninety-six absentee ballots were issued to voters in the Second Ward, and as of Wednesday 83 had been returned. No matter what the outcome, Sarowar will remain on the ballot in November, since he was cross-endorsed by the Conservative Party. There is also a Republican candidate running for alderman in the Second Ward: Lee Bradshaw.
The tightest race, however, is for alderman in the Fifth Ward. On Tuesday night, Vicky Daskaloudi led with 73 votes, and Mark Bodnar trailed with 29 votes, but the real contest was between incumbent Dominic Merante and Rebecca Borrer, who ended the day with 51 and 50 votes respectively.
Absentee ballots had to be postmarked by June 22 and must be received at the Board of Elections by June 29. The counting of absentee ballots will begin at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, June 30.
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The following comment was submitted by Sam Pratt:
ReplyDeleteIt is worth doing some actual math on these absentees. The standard to apply is not really “Are there enough ballots total to change the outcome?” but "How many votes would the person who is ahead need to net in order to ensure victory?”
I published a formula on my site some years ago which explains how to compute these numbers:
https://www.sampratt.com/sam/2013/11/counting-absentees.html
The Borrer/Merante race is easy to compute, since Borrer is only behind by 1, and thus needs to net +2 votes to win. Or, looked at the other way, Merante can lose a total of 1 vote and still win.
So:
Once all absentees are in, Borrer needs to get two more than Merante. There are many combinations of votes which could lead to this outcome, since each voter can choose two of the four candidates, but there can also be “undervotes” (when someone only vote once for Alderman, or doesn’t vote at all for that position, e.g. if they were only interested in voting in the Treasurer’s race). For example, if Merante gets 2 votes, Borrer gets 4, the other two candidates get 1, and the rest are undervotes, Borrer wins. Or it could be 1/3/5/0. Or 0/2/4/3. And so on.
In the case of the 2nd Ward, there are many more ballots to be counted, but Jones faces an almost insurmountable deficit of 45 with 83 absentee ballots to be counted so far. Say that number increase to 90 before the deadline for ballots to be returned... Jones would have to split those 90 votes by something like 68-22 just to tie.
And the actual number of votes cast for the two is probably smaller than the total, given the three-candidate race and undercoating problem.
So unless Jones focused very heavily on making sure people voted absentee, and Rony did no, the likelihood of the 2nd Ward Alderman outcome changing seems very slim.
Endnote: Ties are, incredibly, decided by coin flips iirc.