That's quite a margin he won by.
A Board of Selectmen is one of those mysterious New England customs, and the Wikipedia article doesn't exactly make things crystal clear. But the upshot is, Jon is now one third of the three-person executive that leads the town of Hillsboro, New Hampshire. (There is no mayor.)
Congratulations, Jon. May you never have to hold your head in your hands and groan, "I gave up ski patrol for this?"
Congrats to Jon.
If they have a 3-person panel, are the selectmen voted for all at once (meaning the other people we see on the ballot also "won"), or do they replace one at a time so they don't have to start from scratch? Is there a first selectman?
Our town has a 5 member board of selectmen, with one of them being the first selectman. I believe the other 4 members are 2 from Republican Party and 2 from Democratic. It looks like they all get voted on every two years, but I think many of them get voted back on the board time after time. I think first selectman is a separate item on the ballot.
Sarah
My impression is that they each serve for three years, one rotating off each year. So this election was about replacing one member. I'll ask Jon to clarify.
Mom is correct about terms.
There is no first or head selectman, they are all equal. There is a chair, which the selectmen pick each year among themselves. They usually have the longest-running selectman be the chair, but not always.
The man Jon is replacing did not run again because of family health issues. A selectman has no term limits, s/he could run and be elected forever.
Jon had wondered about running for selectman some time in the future. But at the last minute there was no one running and a friend highly encouraged him to put his name on the ballot. (So, as you can see, at the last minute, two other people besides Jon also put in their names.)
It's nice to know Hillsboro has enough civic-minded people that you'd have three people willing to step forward at the last minute!
I'm not at all used to US ballots, so pardon the question: did the two planners fight a tight battle, or were they two candidates for two positions?
Not shown here is the second page of the ballot results. There I found Jonathan Daley (apparently running unopposed) received 479 votes to be "moderator" for a one-year term. What is this?
Hmmm. I missed that. But Jon says elsewhere, "I was also elected school moderator this year (running unopposed)" so that must be it. Funny that he should be Jon in one place on the ballot and Jonathan in the other, but I don't think the person I know as Jonathan Daley is old enough for the position.
I can't remember how the name got put in two different ways, but it is the same person.
School moderator is a non-conflicting position. He will moderate the school budget meeting that happens once a year.
He was training to be moderator for both school and town. The town moderator position will not be open until next year, and being selectman will conflict with that, so he won't run at least until after his selectman term is up.
The town allowed me to put my name down however I wanted, and the school made it match my license. It didn't occur to me until after the deadline had passed that my name would be printed differently during the same election.
Some people were confused by that, and some also thought that I wouldn't be able to serve on both positions, so I should have mentioned that in my newspaper article.
Thank you all for the clarification and congratulations to Jon!
