There are seven candidates for three Democratic nominations for Council, and three candidates for the job of Clerk of Court, to be selected in an unassembled caucus at Burley Middle School auditorium, 901 Rose Hill Drive, on August 20. Since August is a problematic month for lots of folks, two dates have been reserved for casting absentee ballots. Absentee balloting will be held from 5:30 until 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 9 and Thursday, August 18 at the Independence Resource Center, 815 Cherry Ave.

The method of selection: you show up, prove you're qualified to participate, and get a ballot with seven names on it (see below). You circle numbers in the order of your preferences. You can circle one or up to the seven, and hand in the ballot. You go away.

At the end of the day, tellers (green eyeshades and elastic sleeve restraints optional) will tally the votes for each candidate by preference rank. They will then consider all the ones, twos and threes, as a group. If no one candidate has a majority of the votes among this pool, the bottommost vote-getter will be dropped from consideration, and the process repeated. For example, if you happened to list candidate Z as one of your top three preferences, and candidate Z gets dropped from consideration, your fourth preference will be promoted for the next round of tallying.

As candidates achieve a majority, they are considered nominated, their names are removed from further consideration and the process repeated until there are three. If a ballot contains no more preferences for people still in contention, that ballot is discarded and the total of ballots reduced by one.

And similarly for Clerk of Court

The Council Ballot

The Clerk of Court Ballot

(Dave Sagarin, August 5, 2011)