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As of about 3 PM on Friday, three candidates had applied for the interim alder appointment: Paul Ament, Jerry Nelson, and Larry Miller. Jeff Wiswell was expected to apply before the 5 PM deadline. The council will interview the candidates on Monday, October 29 and select an interim alder on November 5.
A number of people have commented that Jeff Wiswell should automatically be chosen because he was the next-highest voter getter last spring. The argument asserted is two-fold. First, back in 1980, a council member resigned and the next highest vote-getter was appointed. Therefore, so the argument runs, the council must abide by that precedent.
Well, no. The statutes give the council the responsibility to choose a replacement, but do not specify how the replacement should be chosen. The fact that one council body decided to pick the next-highest vote-getter over a quarter-century ago is hardly a binding precedent. Choosing the next highest vote-getter is one way to choose, but not the only reasonable one.
The second prong of the argument is that by appointing Jeff as the interim alder we would be fulfilling the will of the voters. This argument is hard to follow. The will of the voters was that he lost. Out of the four candidates for the interim slot, he is the only one that lost the election for this post. Obviously the election was very close and the outcome does not disqualify him, but the council would not be fulfilling the will of the voters by appointing an unsuccessful candidate to the position that the voters chose not to give him. You can't square that circle.
Some of the scuttlebutt suggests that the council members are trying to manipulate this process to further their own political ends. Come on, folks (By they way, none of this talk is coming from Jeff to my knowledge.). Each member is trying to do the best we can to serve the community. My sense is that the council members would rather choose someone who is not going to run in the spring because we don't want to give what amounts to an endorsement to a candidate.
The level of distrust of the council members by some vocal members of the community is disappointing. Maybe we shouldn't appoint an interim alder at all and just wait until next spring.
Friday, October 26, 2007
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The way to square the circle is the following:
ReplyDeleteThe elecation results and the difference between some of the candidates is all but random and not statiscally significant.. Thus, if the elecation were run again wiswell may or may not win..
A "scientist" would understand that the results of that elecation were random..
An election is not a "sample" like an opinion poll and therefore the concept of statistical significance as usually understood does not apply. THe election is an actual count of all the votes cast, and assuming the count is accurate, there is no margin of error. The actual will of the electorate is exactly recorded by the vote totals. Wiswill lost in an absolute sense, not in an approximate one.
ReplyDeleteIf this had been a random sample poll, where some percentage of the electorate is polled, then there would be a margin of error which results from the extrapolation of a small sample onto the overall population. But this is not the case here. The only margin of error that might apply would be if their was some measurement error, i.e. some chance that the vote does not accuratly record the intent of every voter.