We all know there are Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes in a year courtesy of Seasons of Love from Rent and you know I count them all by LOVE.
We all know who won and lost last week but I thought I take a little deeper look into the number for a second.....a reality check.
John Toplikar received 14,894 votes in a losing effort. Is this the size of the voting extreme right in JOCO or is this the size of the No tax, No annexation group in this county? He beat John Segale as he garnered 7693 votes. John Patrick Segale is on suicide watch right about now. A dude who is a complete idiot and a criminal doubled his vote total. Ouch. I'm not sure if this is the size of the hard core, blind, dogmatic right but if it is on the one hand I'm pleased it is so small and on the other..........scared that there are 14,894 idiots in this county. I guess you could also say since turnout was only about 20% that 14894 represents just the VOTING hard core, blind, dogmatic right and that the real total is about 75,000 registered voters?
Looking at things another way.........I was interested in the power of packing the race with lots of candidates. In the US House 3rd District race where we all but conceded Yoder would roll to an easy victory had a decent challenge in Patricia Lightner. But the real story to me is that more people voted AGAINST Yoder than voted for him. Including Lightner's pull, 35,650 voted against Yoder combining all 8 candidates not named Kevin Yoder. Hmmmm......interesting. Had any three of the candidates in a crowded field NOT run and NOT supported Yoder we could be looking at a Chick Fight for the 3rd....well, some might contend it is still a chick fight. Now, we know Yoder would have pulled his share of those votes but you never know and now we'll never know. Just how big is the Johnson County Tea Party?
Another interesting question is how big is typical JOCO person's sphere of influence? With no money and no big organization behind you how many people like you enough to vote for you in Johnson County. It seems to be about 1,600. Of the "all others" most of them received about 1,600 to 1,700 votes. So if you are a good, decent person between your family, friends and the friends they are willing to encourage your sphere of influence should be about 1,600 people. Even Tom Scherer got 2,545 protest votes but because of the outrage of thinking that a elected job is a family right he should have seen an even bigger turnout. Should have been more. Can't figure that one out.
The lesson might be that to just be in the race when you know you don't have the financial backing or experience CAN have an impact on the final result AND just might hurt your cause mortally. While it might be your right as an American.....it might be just downright unAmerican to run when you know you can't win. But then again, if you are Tom Scherer....please by all meaning don't break the streak now....there might be world record for longest continuous campaign at risk.
Anyway, we now know that if you go missing in Johnson County you should be able to get about 1,600 people to help look for you or at least post a lame message about you on their Facebook page.
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1 comment:
pretty interesting. nice post.
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