“President of Us” contest gives glimpse of why people vote

By Darrell Laurant

Published: October 12, 2008

I had thought our “President of Us” contest would provide some clues as to how the citizens of Central Virginia regard the pressing national issues. Instead, it gave me an insight into how and why people vote.

Vote for your favorite candidate and read all the candidates positions’ here

As you probably know, the concept was based on conversations many of us have about how we would run the country if given the chance. What we were offering was the opportunity for a free platform — no advertising dollars to cough up, no petitions to fill out, no party affiliation to declare. Ten local people took us up on the offer.

Maybe allowing that large a field was a mistake (more about that later), but I really liked the diversity these people offered. And having interviewed them face-to-face (all except for latecomer Jason Watson), I was also impressed with them personally.

If I’d had to pick a favorite before the online voting started, it would have been Phil Pantana. A former professor at Liberty University, he has written a book (“America: A Purpose Driven Nation”), had obviously done a lot of reading on the issues, and set down a cogent list of positions gleaned from his book. He even once ran for president for real, as a write-in candidate.

This was a smart guy, he was conservative (supposedly the prevailing sentiment in Lynchburg), and he had lots of Liberty students and staff to vote for him.

Beyond that, I thought maybe Lib Elder, of Gladys, would siphon off most of the “liberal” votes, even though she was reluctant to pigeonhole herself in that manner. Therefore, given the polarization endemic in today’s politics, I figured Pantana and Elder would survive for the runoff election.

Among the others, Charles Tanner, Jim Batton, Watson and Jim McFarland seemed to have the most complete platforms. I saw Tanner as a definite dark horse — he had been an executive with the Mead Corporation and worked for the federal government. Going with the idea of giving each of them nicknames, I called Tanner “the sage.”

Joe Turk, of Bedford, and Belinda Bush, of Lynchburg, emerged as what I would classify as “populists.” Rather than leaning to a conservative or liberal philosophy, they geared their thinking to the average middle-class voter and how that demographic was being pinched by taxes, careless immigration policy and the war in Iraq.

Junior Gallaher was the wild card, advocating no less than a total reshaping of our national structure and priorities. As I sat in his basement and listened to him, I was at first taken aback, then wound up thinking that a lot of what he said actually made sense.

Still he said, “I expect to finish last. I’m too radical for most people.”

Finally, there was Marvin “Buddy” Crews of Brookneal, a former factory worker disabled by MS and now working on a volunteer prison ministry. He was probably closest in philosophy to Turk and Bush, but made health care his primary emphasis.

The first day of voting, last Monday, Pantana took the early lead, although Watson was surprisingly strong. When I left home for work on Tuesday, Buddy Crews had 18 votes. The next time I checked, he had 72.

By the end of the week, Crews had over 50 percent of the vote, with Watson trailing 100 votes behind. Pantana and Elder were third and fourth, and the rest of the field was getting hardly any love at all.

What the heck was going on? Buddy Crews is a warm-hearted and personable fellow, but he lives in Brookneal, isn’t working, and has a “congregation” of prisoners who can’t vote. Where was all his support coming from? (Note: our system only allows one vote from each individual computer, so there was no way anyone could set up their PC to fire off dozens).

More perplexing, to me, was why five of the candidates were being ignored, even though most of them had excellent platforms. Only Belinda Bush (no relation to George W., by the way) was showing any kind of support beyond the top four.

Then it hit me: That’s the way we vote. The big mistake we made (and I’m not sure we could have done otherwise), was allowing an in-progress look at how the balloting was going. Even in a mock election like this, people don’t like to waste a vote. Therefore, when they saw how far behind Batton, Gallaher, McFarland, Turk and Tanner had fallen, they were reluctant to click a mouse on their behalf.

To me, that says a lot about polls, and how they can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Voting ends today, after which we’re narrowing the field down to two for a runoff election. It looks like both of them will be from Brookneal — and the last time I checked, Lib Elder from Gladys was in third.

Go figure.