What is bullet voting? A bullet vote is when you cast one vote for a favorite candidate even when you have the ability to cast two or even three votes in any given election.
Bullet voting works best in small voter pools. In West Hollywood ‘the bullet vote’ was used often in years past when Weho had its elections in March. But after elections moved to the November ballot the effiects of bullet voting is diluted by a much larger voter pool.
Let’s take the example of three candidates, A, B, and C. You favorite choice s A, and B shares the same views but they are your second choice. Candidate C is far to the extreme. Your views are anybody but candidate C. You have two votes. If you bullet vote only for candidate A, then candidate B and C each have a 50% chance to win the second seat. If you voted for the A plus B, both who share the majority of your views, then the extreme candidate C only has a 33% chance to win.
Now lets add more canidates to the field. You like A, and B. But then there is C and D and E who you cannot fathom as your candidate of choice. If you bullet vote for candidate A, the odds of candidate B are now reduced to 1 out of 4 or 25%. The larger the field, the lessor the odds of the candidate you find acceptable coming out on top. If you cast both your votes for A and B, then you have a 40% chance of winning, – which is higher than the 25% if you had just bullet voting.
Bullet voting is more appropriate when there is not alot at stake or if your voting for your best friend of family member. If you want your candidates to win then don’t throw away your second vote.
References for this article: https://sixtysixwards.com/home/why-bullet-voting-is-probably-a-bad-idea/
“Full disclosure: the author of this piece, the publisher of this ‘newspaper’, is running for election for the nth time.”
So since this is a small voter pool I guess that I should vote for candidate “A” that like and candidate “Z” that hasn’t got a chance in hell of winning? Or should I just write in my neighbor’s cat as my second choice?
Only if it’s owned by “a miserable cat lady”…
I’d rather throw my vote away then vote for somebody I don’t know.
I was at an east side meet and greet and one of the hosts told me to only cast one vote for their candidate and not to cast my second vote. I left the meeting disappointed in the candidate and the person who invited me to meet them. .
Lauren Meister did the same thing to me and went down many notches on my ethics ladder.
I’m scared spitless that John Erickson is going to walk away with the win when most people voted against him. I wonder if a couple of the candidates are “plants” as a part of a strategy for just that purpose.
John has a strong stand-alone following even though you would not know it by the commenters here and the moderates are the ones seemingly cannibalizing themselves.
Good point.