Should You Vote for Three Council Candidates?

As strange as it may sound, you might not want to cast all three of your votes in this year’s City Council election on November 5.

Why? Because voting for three candidates might “split” your ballot in a way that pushes up in the ranking someone you do not want in office.

In 2015, we asked Mike Conlin, MSU Professor of Economics and a Glencairn resident, to help explain the math. Here’s what we learned from him.

At least in theory, you should:

• only vote for those candidates you would want to see on City Council, even if that is only one or two candidates;
• not vote for someone you don’t feel great about if that person has a real chance of bumping out someone you do feel great about;
• otherwise use all three votes to vote for the three people you would most like to see on the East Lansing City Council.

Want to learn more about what Mike Conlin explained for our readers in 2015? Click here.

ELi has a voter guide that you can see here.