Asheville Election Results...Broad Analysis

There were serious errors in the Council Race Numbers in the third column. Thanks to a phone call, I've since corrected them. Hat Tip to Debbie.
Bobby 08:06 am 11/10/2005


These are preliminary numbers from the Board of Elections. I don't know if anyone else has done this, so here goes:

Mayoral Race

Candidate...................# Votes....%Votes....% Eligible Voters

Terry Bellamy...............10,534.....56.82.....19.10

Joe Dunn.....................8,004.....43.18.....14.51

Participating Voters........18,538.....33.62

Non-Participating Voters....36,609.....66.38

Just over 19 percent of eligible voters decided who the next mayor of Asheville will be. No matter who won the race, this is a sad statement.

City Council Race

Note that each voter can, but does not have to, vote for up to three candidates.

Candidate..................# Votes...% Votes....% Available...% Potential

Holly Jones................11,642.....24.03.....72.10.........21.11

Robin Capes.................9,737.....20.10.....60.30.........17.66

Carl Mumpower...............8,498.....17.54.....52.63.........15.41

Bryan Freeborn..............7,319.....15.09.....45.33.........13.27

Chris Pelly.................6,272.....12.95.....38.84.........11.37

Keith Thomson...............4,975.....10.27.....30.81.........09.02

Votes Cast.................48,443..............100.00.........29.28

Potential Votes not Cast..116,998...............70.72

Per Candidate..............16,147.67

The number of people staying away from the polls are sad here as well. No one was able to spur large numbers of people to the polls.

Note and Commentary

To avoid confusion, remember that there are 55,147 eligible voters, so in the council race, I multipied that number times three to get the potential number of votes that could've been cast. The available votes took the total number of votes cast and divided by three. That left 16,147.67, a number 2,390.33 less than the 18,538 who voted in the Mayoral Race. Not every one who voted in the council race chose three candidates. This had the effect of increasing their favorite candidate(s) odds of making the cut of the top three vote getters. I believe this is the tactic that allowed carl Mumpower to keep his seat on the council.

If any one losing campaign had managed to interest 5,000 voters, a mere 9 percent of eligible voters, their candidate would have been assured of a seat for their particulur race. That speaks volumes.

Why is it so hard to get people to vote?

Should a person should lose their franchise if they miss a certain number of elections in a row?

Or should we be glad these people don't participate because they either don't care enough to vote or know enough about the issues to vote?

Personally, I don't want people who don't care or are ignorant potentially canceling out my vote, there are alraedy too many ignoramuses voting.