
{"id":6616,"date":"2009-08-06T06:14:04","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T14:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=6616"},"modified":"2009-08-06T06:14:04","modified_gmt":"2009-08-06T14:14:04","slug":"there%e2%80%99s-no-such-thing-as-fifth-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2009\/08\/06\/there%e2%80%99s-no-such-thing-as-fifth-place\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no such thing as fifth place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Damon Seils and Brad Hammill<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The resignation of Bill Strom from the Chapel Hill Town Council has touched off a discussion about the appropriate process for filling the vacancy. In the upcoming municipal elections, eight candidates are vying for four council seats. The town charter requires the additional fifth seat vacated by Strom to be filled by appointment. The charter offers little guidance on the appointment, stating only that the town council must accept applications for the position. It gives no instructions and no deadline for choosing among the applicants.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most seductive proposal is to appoint the so-called fifth-place finisher in the upcoming election. This option seems to offer a simple way for the council to make the appointment while respecting the will of the voters. At least two current council members have publicly supported this approach.<\/p>\n<p>But this seemingly simple approach is the wrong one. There is no such thing as fifth place in a pick-four election.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nImagine a town council election in which candidates A, B and C are running for a single seat. Candidate A receives 4,000 votes, Candidate B receives 3,000 votes and Candidate C receives 6,000 votes. Candidate C wins the election.<\/p>\n<p>Now imagine that a second seat became available during the campaign season because of a resignation and must be filled by appointment. Some people might argue that Candidate A should be appointed because she came in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153second place.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>However, in a pick-one election, receiving the second highest number of votes is not the same as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153second place.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Why? Because we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how the 6,000 people who voted for Candidate C and the 3,000 people who voted for Candidate B would have voted in an election for two open seats.<\/p>\n<p>What if we had known voters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 rank-ordered preferences for all the candidates on our imaginary ballot? It is possible the preferences would have looked like this: 4,000 votes for candidates A then B then C; 3,000 votes for B then C then A; and 6,000 votes for C then B then A. In this example, Candidate B is the most preferred, C is the second most preferred and A is the least preferred. It would make sense to appoint candidate B to the vacant second seat, because candidates B and C would have won a pick-two election. <\/p>\n<p>This scenario could easily happen in an election in which two candidates (such as B and C) hold similar views and split the ballots of like-minded voters. In a pick-one election, voters would choose either candidate; in a pick-two election, they would choose both.<\/p>\n<p>Our elections do not allow voters to indicate their rank-ordered preferences for all the candidates on the ballot. In our imaginary election, we would have no way of knowing who were the first and second most preferred candidates. In other words, there is no second place in a pick-one election.<\/p>\n<p>Likewise, in Chapel Hill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upcoming pick-four election, there will be no fifth place. We will have no information about who is the fifth most preferred candidate. We will simply end up with candidates who win first, second, third and fourth places \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and everyone else.<\/p>\n<p>A similar situation arose in Carrboro several years ago. Two sitting aldermen faced each other in the 2005 mayoral race. Whoever<br \/>\nwon would leave a vacant seat on the Board of Aldermen. In the same election, six candidates ran for three other seats on the board.<br \/>\nWhen the time came to appoint someone to the new mayor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unexpired term as alderman, some people argued that the candidate who received the fourth highest number of votes in the pick-three alderman race was entitled to the seat.<\/p>\n<p>Given the dynamics of that pick-three race and the positions of the candidates, it is not at all clear that the candidate with the fourth highest number of votes was the fourth most preferred candidate in the eyes of the voters. As in our imaginary pick-one election, we had no information about the voters\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 preferences for every candidate on the ballot. The board ultimately appointed another community member to serve the remainder of the unexpired term.<\/p>\n<p>Members of the Chapel Hill Town Council will have a variety of ideas about what criteria they should use in selecting an applicant for Strom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unexpired term. Some may insist on appointing the fifth- highest vote-getter. Others may attempt to identify an applicant they believe the broader community will prefer, or who will work well on the council, or who will share their own policy positions, and so on. In any case, it is worth remembering that the council members were elected to make these kinds of decisions on behalf of the community. Their best bet is to avoid the trap of looking for a fifth place that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exist.<\/p>\n<p><em>Damon Seils lives in Carrboro. Brad Hammill lives near Chapel Hill.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Damon Seils and Brad Hammill The resignation of Bill Strom from the Chapel Hill Town Council has touched off a discussion about the appropriate process for filling the vacancy. In the upcoming municipal elections, eight candidates are vying for four council seats. The town charter requires the additional fifth seat vacated by Strom to be&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6617,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616\/revisions\/6617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}