Election 2013: Charter Vote Analysis

Of  the 750 total voters at both Precincts almost all tried their hand at the Charter Amendments casting 685 votes on A, 689 on B, 709 on C, and 696 on D.

All the Charter items passed by a wide margin. The City seemed to have a definite interest in their passage and the residents being good eggs tried to be helpful, The Spirit of helpfulness was not however reciprocated by the City,

The City did not publish  ballot language of the Charter Amendment in it's entirety, in any public medium, prior to the election. That includes the City web site, and the City newsletter the Hills Highlight which simply offered "summaries"  snippets, or "in part"  encapsulations . 

One Commissioner (Stuart Sherr) when pressed into a snippet writing detail urged voters to consult the complete text found on the Oakland County Elections Web site before voting. Good legal advice. The Complete text was also available in this publication, the League of Woman Voters Election Guide, and in a mailing by candidate Mark Kapel.

The City in information given to area newspapers, described the Amendments as house keeping items.  A house keeping item in this writer's mind is where you put the manual cheese grater. I would put it next to the Cuisinart but the wife likes it  the gadget drawer. 

In  reality  the Charter amendments were not easy to grasp and two  propositions  were trickier than usual with potential consequences and side effects. Such was the case with a items  A and C. 

Proposition A  asked the voter to acknowledge the election changes City Commission made in September of 2012. One area newspaper that gets it's information from calling City Hall on the telephone  has on three occasions written that the City was seeking the residents approval. Acknowledge and approve are not synonymous. You may acknowledge a sorry state of affairs but you don't approve of it. 

Sad but true The State of Michigan has given City Commissions like ours the right to make election decisions without citizen approval, and over ride existing city charters. That means what was acknowledged last Tuesday could be changed by a vote of the commissioners tomorrow. If the point of eliminating elections is to save money, Why have a useless vote to acknowledge what the people have no control over. Maybe to make everyone feel good.  

Proposition C is about conflict of interest. Our charter already says 

has a section on this topic.The amendment wants to "add a sentence  to the above section" to authorize the commission to implement this sentence by adopting a resolution or ordinance."

The trouble is Proposition  C does  not tell us what the added sentence will say, or what resolutions or ordinances will be written or invoke or implemented. It is thus a blank check.

               currently  in the charter

            

With little to guide them however 80 voters voted "NO."on A. Perhaps they are familiar with state's arcane election laws and wondered what is  the point ?  Maybe they didn't  feel like acknowledging what they had no say in. It could also be a healthy dose of civic cynicism kicking in.

Only 26 rejected C. At first glance C looks  good. Our City is taking action against conflict of interests. The trouble is the City doesn't  tell you the specifics of what that action will be. They also duck the obvious question  of why a conflict of interest outlawed currently in the City Charter needs additional help in being enforced.

Election 2013. The Precinct vote for Candidates

Below is an Precinct Map of Oakland County. The green rectangle with a  wave, bump, or little mountain inside is the City of Bloomfield Hills. The City, delineated by straight lines on all four sides and with the little mountain inside is one of the easiest communities  to identify in maps like these,
The mountain  is actually Vaughan Rd coming into Long Lake Road before descending into Woodward Avenue. It is the result of  Cranbrook Schools and the city roads wrapping around it look closely and you  will see that the  Green rectangle lies on a diagonal line. That is Woodward Avenue. North of the bump is Precinct 1 which votes at City Hall. South of the bump is Precinct 2 which  votes at the Congressional Church at Cranbrook Road and Woodward Avenue.

Below is the  the Precinct Map in more "real " life. With proper magnification you make out your house number, Pink is precinct 1.  Light Green is Precinct 2. Blue is water.

City Hall and the Church polling locations are indicated by the tips of white triangles,

Top vote getter Stuart Sherr's literature said he was the only candidate with a unique skill set of  qualifications.  Residents didn't believe that  and gave almost  the same number of votes to Candidate Pat Hardy who made no such claim. The two candidates  were separated by a 12 vote margin (11 in Precinct 1  and a one vote margin in Precinct 2),

 Like gift wrapping on Christmas, voters tore through the external  packaging and put  their presents in two categories. Incumbent and Challenger. Of the two residents preferred the first group electing  two incumbents and one challenger.

If one looks at the precinct vote as two separate elections rather than one certain details lost in the  Mélange à quatre become apparent.

All the candidates, including "write in " got the majority of their votes in Precinct one  which  cast 1099 votes on election day. It was there that the election was decided.

Hardy and Sherr combined vote total was 651.Coakley and Kapel's was 445.

Precinct 2 cast 686 votes of which 395 were cast for Hardy or Sherr. Coakley and Kapel got 291.

In the "race between Hardy and Sherr" there were no surprises. It  was a dead heat at every turn enroute to 12 vote margin of victory for Sherr out of  the  approximately 1000 votes cast for the two candidates Some may consider that a surprising outcome between a 10 year  Commission veteran and a nine month first time Commissioner. Sheer however campaigned hard and spent in excess of $4000 of his own money. Hardy's campaign was  more quiet   and the behind the scenes.

The Coakley and Kapel voting was  full of of surprises. For one Coakley did phenomenally well in Precinct One earning 267 votes to Kapel's 178. That was a 89 vote difference  was the biggest component in what would be a 112 vote margin of victory for Coakley.

Surprise Number 2 is Coakley's anemic vote total in Precinct 2. Here Coakley received 157  votes to Kapel's 134. A mere 23 vote margin made much smaller by           pre-election  expectations. In Precinct 2 Coakley is a favorite son and long time officer and president of the Rudgate Home Owner's Association,  is billed as the City's largest. Every before the election pundits were pencilling in precinct two for Coakley. On election day 686 votes were cast by Precinct 2. A hundred votes more for Coakley would have made him the top vote getter in the whole election.  

Two factors may provide an explanation. Voters prefered incumbents to challengers by a large margin and ballot rotation. 

The latter, mandated by the state of Michigan for fairness, uses alphabetical order to place names on the ballot.At every precinct that the candidate names rotated In a twenty Precinct  community  like Birmingham the candidate names will rotate five times for four candidates.

In two precinct Bloomfield Hills, that happened only once. In ballots sent to Precinct 1 , the alphabetical order was Coakley-Hardy-Kapel-Sherr. In Ballots sent to precinct 2 the order was  Hardy-Kapel-Sherr-Coakley. 

Take it a step further and assign a value  by numbering  the positions top to bottom 4-3-2-1.Hardy with a first and second positions is most favored with 7. Next was Kapel with 5 (best position 2nd in precinct 2).Coakley with 4 was third (Best position first in Precinct 1) and last Sherr with 2. 

What does Ballot position mean ? Why nothing at all. Just ask  Scheer, Stuart  or Zambricki, Michael  (City Commissioner 1989 to 2013) who never lost a City election.

That said, with the wisdom of the proverbial smoked filled room and the concurrence the State of Michigan, ballot rotation may be used with caution to explain anomalies in a small universe.

Election 2013 Winners: Rookie candidate Stuart Sheer a surprise top vote getter in City Election with 529 votes.

Even more surprising is that there were no real losers in the election. Everybody could take a bow including the voters. 

Voter's  ballots were returned with an average of 2.38 votes.  Of course there is no such thing as a "zero, decimal point, 38" vote or a partially filled in oval. That strange little .38 fraction of a whole (arrived at by dividing the number of votes cast by the number of voters), does however indicate that  voters did their homework.  On election day  the residents had four choices, not voting, casting one vote, casting two or casting three votes.  

One vote was the minimum  that got you counted. Such a vote while not very helpful in resolving matters may have been used to vote for a favorite friend, who one wanted to win above all. Two votes were more the norm. Everybody had a favorite and a runner up. Adding to the "two vote" total  was a reportedly large number of voters who said they absolutely would not vote for "X" but saw that as no reason to cast the the extra vote for "Y". 

Three votes was the maximum allowed and the average voter providing  2.38, apparently finding something to like in three candidates more often than not.

The more candidates the voter selects, the more balanced the commission could be and the more  input the residents have. Taken in the extreme if all voters cast one vote for the same person, That person as the only commissioner elected would have to appoint the other four.

That could theoretically and mathematically  happen in 2015 when the entire commission will be up for re-election. In that election residents will be asked to "vote for five."

The 2.38 votes per ballot fell short of a perfect "three" by .62. Multiply.62 times the total vote and you come up with 107 additional votes which is rather significant number  when one considers the gap between each candidate ranked by votes was around 112.

In addition to Mr. Sherr and  the 750  voters there were the other residents of note as well. Most notably the election workers who made the election possible and of course the three other candidates.

Pat Hardy was the second highest vote getter with 517 only twelve votes behind Stuart Sherr. Her election will mark the beginning of  years eleven and twelve as a City Commissioner. First elected in 2003, Commissioner Hardy has never lost a City election.

Michael Coakley delivered a bravura and successful first time   run for City Office earning 424 votes and a  seat on City Commission.

Mark Kapel  the only candidate to run in both the 2012 and 2013 election was fourth and last with 312 votes  but that was double the number of votes received the year prior.

1936 Presidential Candidate Alf Landon once said that when you only carry Maine and Vermont you don't lie awake nights thinking about what you might have done differently.

Candidate Kapel can be pleased with his elevation to the realm of sleepless nights.

Election 2013.The Charter Amendments Vote.

The total votes the  on the  Charter Amendments  PROPOSITION A
		Percent	Votes
YES		88.32%	605
NO		11.68%	80
Total Vote Cast			685
PROPOSITION B
		Percent	Votes
YES		88.97%	605
NO		11.03%	76
Total Votes Cast			689
PROPOSITION C
		Percent	Votes
YES		94.92%	673
NO		5.08%	36
Total Votes Cast			709
PROPOSITION D
		Percent	Votes
YES		95.11%	662
NO		4.89%	34
Total Vote Cast			696

Complete Text of the Charter Amendments 

CHARTER AMENDMENT PROPOSITION A

CHARTER III, SECTION 4 AND CHAPTER IV, SECTION 7

The proposed amendment amends Chapter III, Section 4, and Chapter IV, Section 7, to acknowledge that city commissioners are elected to 2 year terms at the odd-year November election commencing with 3 commissioners being elected at this 2013 election and all 5 commissioners being elected in November 2015.

Shift from annual May elections to the November odd-year general election was made last fall by the statutorily-authorized Resolution 22-2012 of the Commission.

The amendment also provides that a commissioner’s term of office commences on the first Tuesday after the commissioner’s election.

Shall this amendment be adopted?

CHARTER AMENDMENT PROPOSITION B

CHAPTER III, SECTION 5

Chapter III, Section 5 [Organizational meetings; election of mayor and mayor pro tem] provides for an organizational meeting of the city commission. At this meeting the commissioners elect from among themselves a mayor and mayor pro tem on the first Monday after each city election. It is proposed that the day for

this organizational meeting be changed, from the first Monday after each city election, to a regularly scheduled meeting in November of each year.

Shall this amendment be adopted?

CHARTER AMENDMENT PROPOSITION C

CHAPTER IV, SECTION 4

Chapter IV, Section 4 [Conflicts of Interest] provides that no member of the city commission shall vote for any contract or expenditure of any city money if he or she

is financially interested in the proceeds of the contract or expenditure. It is proposed that a second sentence be added to this section to authorize the commission

to implement this section by adopting a resolution or ordinance.

Shall this amendment be adopted?

CHARTER AMENDMENT PROPOSITION D

CHAPTER VII, SECTION 9

The proposed amendment to Chapter VII, Section 9, [Annual Budget] changes the deadline date for the commission to prepare an annual budget, from the 10th

day in May, to the second Tuesday in May.

Shall this amendment be adopted?