SmartChoices supporters undervoted.

The Caucus empaneled a full slate. There were four openings and Illinois provides that the votes of a single voter may be cast for four of the nominees. Accordingly, it is possible to have exactly four times as many votes as ballots.

It is also possible for a lesser number of votes that that to be cast, but not more. For example, if a voter selects five candidates, he has “overvoted”. Such a ballot is disqualified for that one race and that ballot results in no votes cast for that race. It is possible that such a voter might successfully vote in other races, so his ballot is meaningful for those other races but his ballot would have no effect on the race in which he overvoted.

So no one should ever deliberately overvote. There are valid reasons why one might choose to “undervote” however. Races in which a voter chooses to undervote are not disqualified from his ballot. And so, if the voter cares a lot about Julie Gottshall but has no strong opinion about any other candidate, that voter should cast only one vote in Julie’s race so that none of his other votes will be cast for a candidate who may displace her in the final tally.

In fact, SmartChoices did not empanel a full slate. A savvy voter who wanted to support SmartChoices should not cast his fourth vote because it would add to the non-SmartChoices tally. The best way to support the three SmartChoices candidates is to undervote.

The precincts of Knollwood have an undervote rate of 24.1 percent. The other precincts have a rate of 15.2 percent.*

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Precinct	D65 votes	D65v/4	Ballots Cast	Registered Voters	Turnout	Blank Ballots	BB/BC	Caucus Area

Lbrtyvl 175	50	13	55	916	6.00 %
Shields 233	0		35	328	10.67 %
Shields 234	0		44	739	5.95 %
Shields 235	838	210	281	772	36.40 %	71	25 %	1
Shields 236	671	168	217	669	32.44 %	49	23 %	2

Shields 237	1400	350	416	1,229	33.85 %	66	16 %	3
Shields 238	1198	300	348	942	36.94 %	48	14 %	5
Shields 239	0		217	1,137	19.09 %
Shields 240	1053	263	317	943	33.62 %	54	17 %	4
Shields 241	1434	359	419	1,219	34.37 %	60	14 %	6

In the table above, all ten precincts are listed. Four of those precincts are partially within District 65 but not significantly so. For purity of analysis, consider only the other six rows.

Columns 2, 4, 5 and 6 were taken from the County Clerk’s website. Column 2 is the number of votes made in the District 65 race. Dividing that number by 4 (since it is “vote for 4”) will produce the number of ballots cast if there were no disqualifying overvotes (which I assume for the purpose of this discussion) and no strategic (or accidental) undervotes -- Column 3 is simply Column 2 divided by 4.

(Columns 5 and 6 are not relevant to this analysis but are interesting. Notice that turnout for these six precincts range from 32 percent to 37 percent. This compares to a county-wide turnout of 17.62 percent. The turnout in District 65 was twice that of all Lake County.)

Notice that the number of ballots calculated in Column 3 is always less than the number of actual ballots cast shown in Column 4. That difference is posted to Column 7 and shows the number of ballot-equivalents that were cast with no votes made in the District 65 race. In fact, the number of ballots with undervotes in that race is probably considerably higher. If, for example, each undervoting ballot casts two votes instead of none, then there would be twice as many ballots.

Column 8 is simply Column 7 divided by Column 4, which expresses Column 7 as a rate. Considering the six numbers of Column 8, it seems that the popularity of SmartChoices is consistent with strategic undervoting. Column 9 identifies the six LBSC areas.