According to the Meck BOE in the 2 Mecklenburg precincts 3831 ballots were cast, including 22 "undervotes" where there was no selection for mayor. That is a Mayoral undervote percentage of 0.57% -less than one percent. Compare that to the combined undervote and write-in of more than 27% in 2015 when Woods was the only candidate on the ballot. When people have choices they vote. When tjry don't they stay home or leave the race blank.
On the Commissioners side, as reported earlier, David Sitton maintained the 8 vote lead he had on election night to be the 5th Commissioner. As for the undervote there, each of the 3831 ballots cast could have voted for up to 5 candidates yielding 19,155 possible votes. According to MeckBOE 2843 votes were not cast yielding an undervote percentage of 14.8%. That means the average voter cast 4.26 votes out of 5 possible votes.
The low undervote counts in both races are a testament to what competition and choices can do to voting patterns. In the winner take all format of the Mayoral competition almost nobody left it blank or wrote in somebody. In the plurality format for the Commissioners race casting 4.26 out of five votes is very solid. When one considers the tight grouping of the top 6 candidates and the big falloff to the remaining candidates, it's clear most voters coalesced around the same candidates and cast all or almost all of their available votes to that group.
Another interesting thing to note is that Mayor Woods, Commissioner Graham, and Commissioner Anderson all received about the same number of votes. It's risky reading too much into that, but it would seem to say that there were about 1000 voters who could be categorized as "status quo" voters who voted for the incumbents who lost. If true, that would mean they were only a little over 1/4 of the over 3800 voters who went to the polls.
Taken all together it is hard to see these numbers as anything but a mandate for change in how Town Hall operates.
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