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Guest Donna

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We have 3 openings on a Council (the Council is a Committee of a school Board). There were 7 candidates running for election. Parents were allowed to cast their votes during a specified period of time. Ballots were counted and the first two openings were filled without an issue. The third spot is the issue. The next highest vote was held by 3 candidates with only a few ballots separating the last candidate. Our Bylaws do not address "ties." If we have a run off and have another election, do we include the 4th (last) candidate or just the candidates in the 3 way tie? Thank you.

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The third spot is the issue.

The next highest vote was held by 3 candidates with only a few ballots separating the last candidate.

Our Bylaws do not address "ties."

If we have a run off and have another election,

do we include the 4th (last) candidate or just the candidates in the 3 way tie?

You are to include everyone who did not already win (i.e., no need to mess with the top 2 winners).

Put another way, you don't "drop" anyone.

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We have 3 openings on a Council (the Council is a Committee of a school Board). There were 7 candidates running for election. Parents were allowed to cast their votes during a specified period of time. Ballots were counted and the first two openings were filled without an issue. The third spot is the issue. The next highest vote was held by 3 candidates with only a few ballots separating the last candidate. Our Bylaws do not address "ties." If we have a run off and have another election, do we include the 4th (last) candidate or just the candidates in the 3 way tie? Thank you.

Only candidates who receive a majority vote are elected. Not just the highest vote count, but a majority--their name must appear on more than half of the ballots cast.

I presume your ballot for Council says "Vote for three" and there were seven candidates. You count up the number of ballots that had AT LEAST one person named (blank ballots don't count). Say 50 ballots were cast. A candidate would have to receive 26 votes to be elected.

Did each of your top two candidates get a majority? If so, they are elected. If not, they are not. But clearly your third place did not get a majority. In a three-way tie, that's impossible. So you need to hold a second ballot with ALL of the nominated candidates who were not already elected.

It is also in order to re-open nominations by a majority vote, or people are free to write in names. But here again, if you only need to elect one more (and I don't know if you actually succeeded in electing two), then it's not enough to get the most votes. One has to get a majority. In the case of electing to one seat, the victor would have to receive more votes than all the other candidates put together.

And if nobody gets a majority, you keep voting over and over until minds begin to change, which sometimes doesn't happen until the seventh or eighth ballot. And sometimes candidates withdraw after seeing the handwriting on the wall, but it is not in order to drop them involuntarily.

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