Bill Humphrey will replace John Rice as the Ward 5 ward councilor, besting Waban Area Council President Kathy WInters.
Results:
- Humphrey — 974
- Winters — 940
In September, Humphrey narrowly won a three-candidate preliminary with 491 votes over Winters with 484 votes and Rena Getz with 437 votes.
Getz mounted a write-in campaign that won her 369 votes, today.
https://twitter.com/BillHumphreyMA/status/1191889809356283904?s=20
Not at all happy about this.
I think Ward 5 has lost an opportunity
to build on John Rice’s legacy.
I hope I’m wrong..
I never took this guy seriously.
I wish I had run!
Congratulations to Bill on having his hard work pay off.
Of those 369 write-in votes, I wonder who would have been their second choices? I accosted a couple of prominent Rena Getz supporters in O’Hara’s, and asked them this very question: their second choice was Kathy Winters.
Oh, well.
Once again, a self-important, myopic spoiler can’t get beyond herself, step aside, and a confused electorate inadvertently hands the victory to a candidate with a totally different ideology.
5/1 was looking for an advocate to fight excess at Northland? Meet Councilor Humphries.
John Rice isn’t being replaced. He’s being succeeded.
Congrats Bill, the future is for the young!
For Getz/Winters, I think the saying is “too cute by half”
Ha!
Ward 5 had very commendable choices this round, congratulations Bill!
All your door knocking and conversations paid off this time.
It’s instructive to examine the results by precinct. In precincts 2 (Highlands south), 3 (Highlands north) and 4 (Waban), Kathy beat Bill by 6, 5 and 11 votes. In precinct 1 (Upper Falls), which will be most impacted by Northland, Rena’s anti-development stance beat Kathy into third place, with Bill making his biggest gains.
I may be no statistician, but, yes, the Getz Effect in handing the victory to Bill was a real thing.
@Robert: precisely.
Can we give 5/1 a mulligan?!
When a switch to ranked choice voting comes to a ballot near you, vote yes. It’s a proven way to avoid spoiler effects by allowing people to make (what they feel is) a token symbolic choice in first place, while not throwing away that vote.
I don’t get this narrative that Rena cost Kathy the election. Many people vote for reasons other than issues…like their assessment of a candidate’s sincerity, character, likeability, effort, potential to be effective, or based on identifying w/ the candidate in some way. 369 people voted for Rena in what they knew was a long shot. To me that says they did not have a strong preference between Bill and Kathy.
68 people who voted for Rena in September did not vote for her in November. If all 68 of those votes had gone to Kathy, it would have been enough for her to win. But Bill’s margin over Kathy increased by 26 votes. From Sept. to Nov, Bill gained more votes than Kathy in 5-1, Rena’s stronghold.
There’s no way to know what would have happened had Rena not run as a write-in.
@Rhanna and others
I hope we all agree (and signed the petition yesterday) that ranked choice voting would be a far superior approach, and put these speculations to rest!
Let’s give voters a full choice.