Many did not make selections for all 11 spots

County council ‘Bullet’ voting and ‘ballot fatigue’ cited as possible factors

As predicted by political analysts, many Luzerne County voters did not cast ballots for all 11 county council openings on Tuesday.

A total 254,693 “under votes” was recorded in the race among 28 candidates, according to unofficial results.

An under vote is tallied when voters don’t select the full number of allowable candidates in a contest. For example, 10 under votes were recorded if someone chose only one candidate in the county council race.

Voters were expected to skip some selections in the council race because of the challenge of picking among so many contenders. Future council seats will be filled in groups of five or six elected every two years.

Some candidates encouraged voters to select only them or a few, a strategy known as bullet voting.

“Ballot fatigue” also caused some voters to pass over selections, speculated Wilkes University political science professor Tom Baldino.

Baldino researched candidates in advance and brought a list of his selections into the polling place, and it still took him several minutes to vote.

He believes many voters chose only “the people they felt most strongly about” in the council and judicial races.

There were 137,651 under votes in the county Court of Common Pleas race, in which seven candidates competed for six seats.

The county statistics report the number of under votes only in multiple-seat races – not the number of voters who exercised their option to choose only some or none.

However, the voter count may be gleaned when only two candidates ran for one seat because voters had only two options: pick one or not vote at all.

For example, only 3,811 voters opted not to make a selection in the two-person race for county district attorney, according to unofficial results.

A range of 17,204 to 19,464 voters chose not to answer yes or no on the retention of a Supreme Court judge, two Superior Court judges and three Commonwealth Court judges, the unofficial results show.

Baldino noted these retention questions appeared at the end of the ballot, and it’s likely some voters weren’t familiar with the performance of these judges.

The county also reports statistics on the number of votes that had to be tossed because absentee voters chose too many candidates on their paper ballots.

These “over votes” must be thrown out because there’s no way to know which should be chosen, said county Election Bureau Director Leonard Piazza.

Over votes can’t be made on the electronic voting machines because the machines prohibit the selection of too many candidates in each race, Piazza said.