Should you vote for two candidates in a two-seat election? Not necessarily

Don't look for any of the four candidates facing off in Dec. 3's runoff for two at-large Cedar Rapids City Council seats to be campaigning alongside one another.

Instead, don't be surprised in the sprint leading up to the Dec. 3 runoff vote if one or all the candidates employ a quiet election tactic in which they ask supporters to cast one vote for them and to forgo voting for a second candidate.

It turns out that voting for two candidates can dilute the value of both votes vote compared to voting for just one candidate.

Tuesday's election returns in the race for the two at-large Cedar Rapids council seats suggest that some of the seven candidates in Tuesday's field or their supporters, in fact, may have employed the tactic already.

Of the 18,302 voters who cast votes in the race for two at-large council seats on Tuesday, 3,833 voted for only one of the seven candidates and not two, as they had the ability to do.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller tracks the phenomenon, which is called "under-voting."

However, Miller is not able to determine which candidates obtained the most votes on ballots in which only one of the two possible votes was cast.

It is indisputable, though, that a voter's vote is more valuable for a single candidate if the voter votes for just one candidate in a vote-for-two race, Miller said.

"Nobody is going to be running together," Miller said of the upcoming Dec. 3 runoff race in Cedar Rapids.

"It's every man and woman for themselves. They're not going to promote anyone else."

In Tuesday's election, none of seven candidates for the two at-large council seats secured the necessary number of votes to win a seat outright.

To win outright, a candidate needed 25 percent of the total vote plus one vote - which is similar to having half the people vote for a candidate in a race when voters can cast two votes.

Without a winner on Tuesday, the four top finishers now will compete for the two seats.

Incumbent Chuck Swore won the most votes on Tuesday, 7,949, which was 241 short of the necessary number to avoid a runoff. Ralph Russell was second with 6,340 votes, Susie Weinacht third with 6,226 votes, and Carletta Knox-Seymour fourth with 4,927 votes.

What is not known is how the vote totals were enhanced or diluted by voters casting just one vote for a candidate.

Miller called "under-voting" a common if quiet strategy to try to secure an advantage. In fact, he said the phenomenon was prevalent four years ago in the Cedar Rapids city election in the race for the same two at-large council seats that were on the ballot on Tuesday.

In 2009, 23,526 voters voted in the two at-large races, but only 34,059 votes were cast out of a possible 47,052 that would have been cast if every voter cast a vote for two candidates in the field. That's a vote undercount of 12,993 votes.

However, the auditor's office that year did not differentiate between those who "under-voted" by casting just one vote and those who didn't vote in the race at all. Some of the 12,993 "under-votes" in 2009 came from those who voted in some of the other races on the ballot, but did not cast votes in the two at-large races.

John Deeth, a staff member at the Johnson County Auditor's Office and an election blogger on the side, said on Friday that campaigns in which voters can cast two or more votes in a race have been known to encourage supporters to vote for one candidate and to forgo using their other votes in the race.

"That's typically a below-the-radar sort of tactic," Deeth said.

The strategy, Deeth said, was apparent in the recent Iowa City school board race, in which word circulated that Coralville residents should vote for the two Coralville candidates on the ballot and not use their third vote. The two Coralville candidates were among the three victors, Deeth said.

In Tuesday's highly contested race for the Coralville City Council, 2,824 voters cast votes for three at-large council seats. However, there were 795 fewer votes that were cast than if every voter had voted for three candidates as they could, Deeth said.

Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett, a political veteran who won re-election easily on Tuesday, said on Friday that most voters aren't thinking about "under-voting" when they have two or more votes to cast in a political race. Some who use only one vote when they have more do so because they might only know one candidate and not others, he said.