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| Got Candidates? |
How Many Candidates?
Link to this post: https://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2018/11/election-districts-part-6-number-of.html
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| Possible district borders of Sunnyvale C.f., https://meetingthetwain.blogspot.com/2018/11/district-elections-cvra-5.html |
The smaller geographical area makes it easier to visit a greater percentage of homes and meet each resident. The smaller number of voters makes it less costly to mail out fliers. This results in money becoming much less important than in political entities with large numbers of voters. In effect, what we see are more people saying to themselves, something like "Hey! I can do this! Talk to my friends and neighbors and they might let me represent them on the city council!"
This is part 6 in the series on "District Elections" in Sunnyvale. Links to the other posts are listed at the end of this post.
Enough Candidates?
The fear of too few, or no candidates for election is groundless. Just a look at the results from Santa Clara County as seen in:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/06/santa-clara-county-election-results-november-2018/
Morgan Hill's District B (below) shows only 3,225 voting for one seat yet there are three candidates. (Click image to enlarge).
Morgan Hill's school district also went to districts with again about 3,000 voting in each voting district as we see in the following (click images to enlarge):
District 5 had 2 candidates, and only 3,106 voting. District 1 had three candidates with 3,818 voting.
District 2 had four(!) candidates with only 3,359 voters and district 4 had 3 candidates with only 2,973 voters.
The City of San Mateo district 1 had only 1,097(!!) votes cast yet had 3 candidates to choose from:
Menlo Park's district 2 had only 2,666 votes cast among two candidates.
Next is Los Altos Hills. The 6,022 votes cast for two candidates means there were a little over 3,011 people voting if everyone voted for two candidates. Just over 3,000 voters yet again, three candidates!
Similarly, in Monte Sereno, there were a small number of voters. 2,861 votes were cast but every voter could cast up to 3 votes. Most likely there were about 1,000 people who voted implying under 2,000 registered voters in Monte Sereno yet they had six! candidates to choose from.
In Albany, CA (adjacent to Berkeley) we see two seats open, a total of 12,090 votes implying a little over 6,045 voters (each could cast two votes). That is not too different from what we would expect in a well attended Sunnyvale district of 8,500 registered voters. With three candidates on the ballot, we see again that there is no shortage of candidates in a small district or city.
This concludes the analysis of small district candidate possibilities.
Other Posts on District Elections
Part 2 - Considering some of the implications of the move to district elections:
Part 3 - Sunnyvale gets a letter saying we must move to district elections (most popular):
Part 4 - California Code #34886. The way the City Council could (likely will) go to district elections. Why was it not presented by staff as an option? Also, "Cumulative Voting".
Part 1 - Announcing with details the September 5th, 2018 special city council meeting to consider going to district elections:
Part 2 - Considering some of the implications of the move to district elections:
Part 3 - Sunnyvale gets a letter saying we must move to district elections (most popular):
Part 4 - California Code #34886. The way the City Council could (likely will) go to district elections. Why was it not presented by staff as an option? Also, "Cumulative Voting".
Part 5 - Analysis of potential districts and the representation of minorities.
