By Noah Dawson

A little over a month has passed since the municipal election. While I cannot say I am happy about how the results for Amarillo City Council turned out, I can say that I have again been vindicated on a point I have made on several occasions: Vote splitting in elections featuring runoffs does not exist. Still, some have held onto the myth that the incumbents would have been ousted if not for vote splitting, though I hope the following will demonstrate the nonsensical nature of such claims.

First, let’s look at the race for Place 3. Place 3 was the only race for Amarillo City Council with only two candidates, those being incumbent Eddy Sauer and challenger Tom Scherlen. In other words, vote splitting could not have been a factor in this race, and, barring an exact tie, one of the candidates was guaranteed an outright majority on election night. Tom Scherlen was also a popular candidate. His signs were in yards across the city almost as soon as he announced his campaign. His appearances at forums regularly drew applause. And Eddy Sauer got more votes than any other winner. That’s right. Eddy Sauer got 11,083 votes, the only candidate in any of the Amarillo City Council races to get over 11,000 votes. Percentage wise, Sauer also did better than any of the other winners with 56.77%.

Let’s compare this with the race for Place 4. Place 4 was the only race for Amarillo City Council to feature four active candidates. (The race for Amarillo Mayor also had four candidates, though, according to campaign finance reports, only three of the candidates raised money.) In this race, incumbent Howard Smith got only 9,656 votes, the fewest of any incumbent. In fact, he was the only incumbent to earn fewer than 10,000 votes. Percentage wise, Smith only got 50.52%, meaning he was less than 1 percent from facing a runoff election.

In other words, the most crowded race was also the closest Amarillo got to a runoff election. Meanwhile, the only race without the mythical threat of vote splitting was the race in which the incumbent did best. What can we learn from this? We need to stop listening to those who seem more worried about “vote splitting” than bad policy. We need more people to run for public office, not fewer. As the Amarillo Pioneer celebrates its fifth year in publication, I hope our dedication to covering local news will continue to inspire the people of our city to get involved.