NO RECOUNT, NO RUNOFF, NO WRITE-IN IN GULFPORT!
On Tuesday, March 16, Mayor Mike Yakes, new Ward III Council Member Jennifer Salmon and new Ward I Council Member David Hastings were sworn in to serve on the Gulfport City Council. The first two named were technically not elected since, by Charter, their names do not appear on the ballot and the third won a five person election with only 28% of the vote on March 9 and 5.9% of the 8,483 registered voters. Mr. Hastings defeated incumbent Judy Ryerson by an 11 vote margin receiving 500 votes to Mrs. Ryerson’s 489.
Our Charter not only prohibits unopposed candidates from appearing on the ballot, it also prohibits write-in votes. So, if some totally incompetent and/or thoroughly despicable person gathers 10 signatures and there is no other candidate, that’s who we get. No muss, no fuss. Voters are deprived of the right and opportunity of conducting a write-in vote to remedy the situation. If a popular leader comes onto the scene and is for some reason or another not able to get on the ballot, citizens are deprived of the right and opportunity to go through the difficult process of a write-in campaign.
Why would our forebears not want unopposed candidates to appear on a ballot? Taken to an extreme, I guess the city could save a lot of money if no seats were contested. No contests, no election. Certainly, it would help insiders retain their seats for long periods if there was low citizen interest in local government. Hiding the true identity of an unopposed candidate by letting them slide in without question or debate would certainly help a bad candidate. It doesn’t help a legitimate candidate since they are deprived of valuable publicity for future elections. Neither the interests of voters nor candidates appear to be served by this quaint practice. Maybe someone out there can come up with an answer. I sure cant.
Prohibition of write-ins is probably at the bottom of the rationale behind leaving unopposed candidates off the ballot. Both practices lend themselves to the needs of machine politics and are a direct affront to voter’s rights. Handling a write-in campaign is messy and potentially expensive but expediency and working on the cheap is certainly no excuse for tramping all over voter rights. Our Charter needs to be fixed on this score before some disenfranchised voter or candidate decides to bring suit.
In the land of the hanging chad, it is inconceivable to me why an 11 vote, .6% margin doesn’t result in an automatic, mandatory recount. State law provides for an automatic recount if the difference between candidates is .5% or less. A recount may be requested from a Canvassing Board that may or may not grant the request based on some fairly subjective criteria. If refused by the Board, a candidate may contest the election formally and be prepared for a long and expensive court process. It is my understanding that Mrs. Ryerson asked what the procedure for requesting a recount was at the City Clerk’s office and based on the response, decided not to pursue a recount. It is unfortunate that a recount was not requested, but even more unfortunate that the automatic trigger isn’t higher than a half of one percent. Both the winner and the loser benefit from a recount in cases like this one. If the count is found to be correct it, affirms the winner’s right and mandate to serve. If the count is found incorrect, an injustice is avoided.
The combined total of votes cast on March 9, 2010 and prior by absentee or provisional ballots was 1784 votes or about 21% of the 8483 Registered Voters in Gulfport at the time of the election. 1118 votes were by absentee or provisional ballots and 666 were cast on Election Day. Mr. Hastings received 500 of the total votes cast. He received 266 votes in Ward I to Mrs Ryerson’s 222 votes. Mrs. Ryerson won two other precincts over Mr. Hastings, 120 to 114 in Ward II and 91 to 71 in Ward III. Stanley Solomons won in Ward IV with 69 votes to Mrs. Ryerson’s 56 votes to Mr. Hastings’ 49.
The result of this election cries out for a Charter change that would provide an automatic run-off between the top two candidates if neither one achieved more than 50% of the votes cast. Run-offs were required until some years ago when it was decided to prohibit them in the Charter. The rationale was reportedly that in the few cases where run-offs were necessary, the top vote getter in the original election always won, so a run-off was a waste of time and money. In this case the 3 other candidates received almost 45% of the vote. With redistribution of that many votes in a run-off, there’s no telling what the final result might be.
As in the case of the Charter’s prohibition of write-ins, the prohibition of run-offs appears to be based on saving time and money. As commendable as that might be, one must balance the relatively small and infrequent costs associated with write-ins and run-offs with the rights of voters to elect people who will truly be representative of the governed.
Of equal importance is the propensity of the practices to further the aims and ambitions of power politicians who may use both factors to elect friendly, but weak candidates in uncontested elections or to put up phony candidates to split the vote to the advantage of the “chosen” candidate. Back in the day when we altered the Charter to ban write-ins and runoffs we might not have had the degree of sophistication to understand what a dominant political group could do with such innocent sounding changes.
The recent incursion of a political party and modern, grass roots, political practices into our local, so-called non-partisan elections should be sufficient warning to close any loopholes that might exist in our possibly outdated election laws.
Voter and candidate rights must be the driving force behind our election laws. Pragmatism alone is not enough in crafting our laws. We must not continue to harbor practices that favor insiders and power politicians. Our new Council should make it a priority to effect the necessary changes in our Charter. We as citizens should push for the liberalization of our recount laws. It is more important to get our elections right than that they be cheap or easy.
It should be noted that the points being made in this piece are summarized in the above paragraph. We saw in this election a prime example of how our present laws may not serve us well. The candidates, especially the winning candidates all appear to be bright and honorable people and in no way are involved in some of the potential abuses of the law described above. We wish them well.
If you showed up earlier and got it right when you threw your hat in the ring, you could have had the pleasure of the contest. Mrs. Salmon was certainly more than willing to run against the Big Dog, but he was late to the starting gate.
Maybe you can try again or move to ward 2 and run against the ???????? ??? ?? ??????? Maybe Sam is sick of playing slap and tickle and with unprincipled people and is ready to go back to the real world? Do us all a favor and run for Mayor, I’m sure if we flip Yates over we’ll find that his expiration date is long over due?
As long as the ???????? ??? ?? ?????? the ???????????? ?????????? ????? ??? and the ???????? are in office the charter won’t be addressed.
I tried my hand at using Greek above, apparently WordPress doesn’t like foreign languages. Elections are overseen by committee so if there was anything out of the ordinary they could have been notified.
Come on people stop the personal attacks–they are not necessary!!