The NG has tried, in today's editorial, to attempt a bit of election analysis:
It's easy to read too much into election results but Champaign voters seemed to deliver a message Tuesday: they generally are satisfied with city government but less so with their school district.
Their reasons for drawing that conclusion were that incumbent Minosca Alcantara came in last place and Nate Banks' undervotes:
But the vote totals for incumbent board member Nathaniel Banks, who ran uncontested for a two-year term, also raised some eyebrows. Although he got 6,286 votes, there were 2,957 "under votes" in his race – meaning that 2,957 people who voted in other races Tuesday consciously opted not to vote for Banks.
While I don't necessarily disagree with their conclusion, I don't agree that undervotes in an uncontested race are compelling evidence of discontent with either the District or with Banks.
A quick glance through the summary results from Tuesday show that there are multiple school board races with unopposed candidates where the undervotes were one-third or one-half of the total vote. Look at Ludlow Board of Education, or Gifford, Armstrong, or Fisher, for examples.
High proportions of undervotes are not uncommon in uncontested races, and I think it's hard to use it as a basis from which to draw conclusions about voters attitudes.
I didn't waste my time casting any votes in uncontested races.
Neither do I.
My undervotes have nothing to do with how I feel about the district.
Yes, I agree with you IP there realy isn't enough info here to make the statement that they didn't like Mr. Banks.
Yes coloring inside those lines has always been so hard. :)
This doesn't really apply because so few students voted in the election, but as a student I only vote in the races that affect me. Meaning I voted in pretty much the city council election because many of their decisions affect me experience in Champaign: Bar age, smoking ban, ect. but I don't even look at who is running for school board because it affects me in no way.
-BBB
I think the big story is less about Banks' undervotes than the fact that he received a higher vote total than any other school board candidate. Of course, he was unopposed. And of course, voters spread their choices among up to 4 candidates in the contested races. But my read of the results is that Banks may be the most popular member on the school board.
The undervotes story is just not there, for all the reasons others have pointed out. I think the NG wrote the wrong story out of the results for Banks.
Sure, Banks got more votes than any other school board member. But he was running UNOPPOSED. Vote for one, and there is only one name there.
Drawing ANY conclusion from that is crazy.
Compare the precincts in which Mayor Jerry and Nate Banks were both running unopposed. How did those vote totals compare?