The bullet vote: why one mark on your council ballot beats five

Ballots went out on October 2, so there's a decent chance yours is sitting on the counter right now. On the council side it says vote for up to five. Most people read that as vote for five, fill in five ovals, and feel good about having done their civic duty. I want to make the case that if you're voting for me, you should fill in my name and stop.

I'll be upfront that this is self-interested. I'm one of the names on that list, and this whole piece is about how to get me elected. That said, the math doesn't care whose campaign is doing it, and I'd rather walk you through it than ask you to take my word for it. (I started my career as an auditor at American Express, so this is the part of campaigning I actually enjoy.)

How the council race gets counted

The council race is simple. Every oval you fill in is one vote for that candidate. When the counting is done, the five candidates with the highest totals win. There's no ranking, no runoff, and nobody needs a majority. The mayor's race is ranked choice and works completely differently, which I wrote about in August.

You also don't have to use all five. A ballot with one council name on it counts exactly the same as a ballot with five, and leaving ovals blank doesn't affect anything else on the ballot.

Every extra name is a vote against your first choice

With thirteen candidates and five seats, nobody wins by getting a lot of votes in the abstract. You win by finishing ahead of whoever comes in sixth. Thus the race that matters is the fight for the last seat or two, and the only number that matters there is the gap between fifth place and sixth.

When you vote for me and four other people, you add one vote to my total and one vote to each of theirs. Against those four, your ballot is a wash: I go up by one, they go up by one, and the gap between us doesn't move an inch. If one of those four happens to be the person I'm neck and neck with for fifth, you've canceled out your own vote for me.

Let's put numbers on it. Say a thousand people want me on council. If every one of them votes for me alone, those thousand ballots put me a thousand votes ahead of every other candidate. Now say each of them adds four more names, spread evenly across the other twelve candidates. That's four thousand votes handed out to my competition, about 333 apiece, and my lead over any one of them shrinks from 1,000 to about 667.

Real ballots don't spread evenly, though. People who like me tend to like a few of the same other candidates, and those candidates are often the ones I'm closest to in the count. If half my supporters also fill in the oval for the person I'm fighting for the last seat, my lead over that person drops to 500. Half of my margin, given away by people who wanted me to win.

Does it really come down to that?

It does in Boulder. In 2023 the city elected four council members, and the last seat was decided by 46 votes after an automatic recount. Each of those two candidates had more than fourteen thousand votes, and the difference between them would fit in a school gym. A few dozen people who wanted the runner-up and also filled in the eventual winner's name could have flipped that seat all by themselves.

This year the field is bigger. There are thirteen of us running for five seats, and with only three incumbents on the ballot, at least two of those seats are going to someone new. I'm one of the newcomers, and I fully expect the fight for the last seat or two to be close again.

The fair objection

The obvious pushback is that bullet voting throws away four votes. I'll grant the real part of that: you get a say in five seats, and voting for one person gives up your say in the other four. That's a genuine cost and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. If there are four other candidates you'd be thrilled to see sworn in, and you care about the whole council as much as you care about me, filling in all five is a perfectly good way to vote. I said as much in August and I meant it.

But a blank oval isn't a vote for anyone you oppose. It just stays neutral. The vote you add for a second candidate, on the other hand, is a vote against your first one in the only place it counts. So the honest question to ask yourself is whether your second choice matters enough that you'd risk your first choice to elect them. For a lot of people the answer is no, and they filled in four more names mostly because the ballot had room for them.

If there's one other candidate you feel strongly about, two names is still a lot better than five. Every name you leave off is one less vote helping somebody edge past me.

What I'm asking

On the council part of your ballot, fill in the oval next to my name and stop there. For mayor, rank as deep as you like; that's a different system, and ranking a backup never hurts your first choice. Then get it back: drop boxes are open around the clock, and ballots have to be received by 7 p.m. on November 3, so if you're mailing it, give it at least a week. If you're not sure you're registered, you can check or update it here.

And if you know someone else who's voting for me, send them this. One oval does more than five. That's it!