The election is over. The votes are counted.
If you want to skip right to the winning names here's where you can click.
full election Results
An animated breakdown of how the voting took place, and how the ranked choice method redistributed the votes, is available at the RankedVote website for this election.
You can also view a static PDF of the results as an spreadsheet.
Interestingly, each of the winning names were ahead after the first round of voting. That is not always the case with ranked choice elections, but it turned out to be true with this one.
Vehicle name:
Saltimus Prime
Winter use:
This is one of the largest vehicles in the Streets Division fleet. When conditions allow, this struck will be used to apply saltwater brine to streets before a snowstorm arrives. The brine mixture is just water and salt (23.3% salt to be precise). When applied, the brine can prevent snow from bonding to the pavement. That means the plowing removes more snow from the road, and less overall salt is needed. It can hold 2,600 gallons of brine.
And here's Saltimus (sort of) in action heading toward the brine fill point at the Badger Rd Streets Division location.
(thank you to Kent Sweitzer Photography for this picture!)
Vehicle name:
Snowbi Wan Kenobi
(picture with the name badge applied is pending)
Winter use:
This vehicle from the Engineering Division removes snow on the Southwest Bike Path and other plowing on Engineering maintained paths. In the summer months, this vehicle is used for mowing around ponds and greenway parcels.
Trackless? What's that mean?
Trackless is the make, like Ford or Chevrolet.
Here's Snowbi Wan in action!
(thank you to Kent Sweitzer Photography for this picture!)
Vehicle name:
Dolly Plowton
Winter use:
This is a traditional plow truck with two wing plows instead of one. The "wing" is the secondary plow you see right behind the main one in the picture above. This is the only dual wing plow in the Streets Division fleet. The double wing helps plow wider streets in one pass. This vehicle is used primarily on the east side of Madison.
Here's Dolly in action!
(thank you to Kent Sweitzer Photography for this picture!)
Vehicle name:
Seymour Pavement
Winter use:
This is a loader with plow blade and a wing attached. It is one of the 11 the Streets Division can use during a citywide plowing operation. They are excellent at plowing cul-de-sacs and dead-ends - and there are hundreds of them within the City of Madison. The articulated middle section allows these vehicles to handle the tight turns in the bulbs of the these kind of streets to help push snow out of the road.
And here's Seymour clearing the roads
(thank you to Kent Sweitzer Photography for this picture!)
About Ranked choice elections
There are many helpful explainer videos that show how ranked choice works. Minnesota Public Radio and the Board of Elections New York City have straightforward videos explaining how the process works.
When you vote, you rank the candidates by your order of your preference. The candidate you like most will be your 1st Choice, your next favorite will be your 2nd Choice and so on.
The vote counting begins by first tallying all of the 1st Choice votes.
If a candidate receives a majority of the votes in this phase, the election is over and that candidate has won.
To be clear a majority means they receive more than half of all the votes cast - it does not mean earning just the most votes in this first round.
If no candidate receives a majority after counting the first choice votes, then the ranked choice portion begins.
The candidate with the lowest first choice vote totals is eliminated. The process then looks at the second choice from these ballots that picked the eliminated candidate as their first choice. The votes from the eliminated candidate are then distributed to the second choice the voters made.
This process repeats itself until one candidate has finally received a majority of the votes.
If at the final elimination, when it's down to just two candidates, and if no one has earned a majority of the support, the candidate with the most votes at this phase is declared the winner.