Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2017 10:15:42 -0500
From: Mike Fox
Subject: dreadpiratejeff’s look at Chatham election results should have gone
back farther
After most every election in Chatham County, the side that lost looks at our voting system and declares it needs to be reformed. But in fact both sides of the partisan aisle and both sides of the geographic divide have won elections under our current system.
Looking farther back at election results: In 2000 “the east” won.
In 2002 “the west” won, using superior funding and organization to elect the Bunkey majority which then approved most of the developments in the northeast that have caused the electoral power to shift more northeast. Ironically, if Bunkey had lost in 2002 and the east had kept power a lot fewer developments would have been approved in the northeast and the electoral power in the county would likely more evenly distributed today. So you could say that by winning that election, the west ultimately lost. Or maybe not? Because let’s keep looking at electoral history.
In 2004 and 2006 “the east” had the superior organization, in the form of the Chatham Coalition, and won again, ejecting the Bunkey majority and returning power to the liberal northeast with the Coalition BOC. In the west there was much gnashing of teeth and an attempt by the lame-duck Bunkey board to institute voting by district, because the at-large system was perceived as an unfair advantage to the northeast.
But despite that so-called unfair advantage, the “west”/GOP came back and won in 2010, ejecting the Coalition BOC and replacing it with a GOP BOC led by Brian Bock.
Then in 2014 the pendulum swung back again, with the northeastern Democrats defeating the Bock/GOP BOC.
In 2016 the east won, similarly to how the west won in 2002 and also similarly to how they won in 2006… with superior funding and organization.
So looking back I’d contend that Chatham elections are competitive, as both sides have been successful in recent times in our at-large election system. Looking at this history it’s hard to conclude that our county’s voting system is a built-in advantage for one side or the other. The most important factors in determining who wins seems to be: who has the superior organization and what is the overall sentiment. This seems right in a democracy.
One final point, to dreadpiratejeff’s listing of precinct results, I suspect if you look back at past election results you will see that most of the controversial commissioner candidates who effected significant change by winning, also lost their home district while winning the county. Including Bunkey, some of the Coalition commissioners, and parts of the Bock majority if not Bock himself. So this phenomenon isn’t a specific advantage to one side either.
Mike