A better way to report City Council results

The way the Hamilton County Board of Elections reports results for Cincinnati City Council can be confusing. They take the votes for a particular candidate and divide it by all of the votes received by all of the council candidates. Top voter-getter John Cranley, therefore, got just 7 percent of the vote.

A more useful number is the percentage of voters who marked one of their nine votes for a particular candidate. (Keep in mind that the average voter voted for only six candidates.)

That's how candidates look at it. Before they begin, campaigns know they have to get about third of city voters to give them one of their nine votes. Only a few select politicians -- Charlie Luken, Roxanne Qualls and David Pepper -- have ever been able to crack 50 percent in a field race.

Here are the results for each candidate, with the percentage of ballots they appeared on:

			Candidate	Votes	Percent
	1		John Cranley	34,899	47.6%
	2		Jim Tarbell	31,809	43.4%
	3		Leslie Ghiz	29,251	39.9%
	4		David C. Crowley	29,222	39.9%
	5		Laketa Cole	29,151	39.8%
	6		Jeff Berding	27,832	38.0%
	7		Chris Monzel	27,464	37.5%
	8		Chris Bortz	26,865	36.7%
	9		Cecil Thomas	26,507	36.2%
	10		Sam Malone	25,222	34.4%
	11		Christopher Smitherman	24,028	32.8%
	12		Damon Lynch III	21,918	29.9%
	13		Wendell Young	21,070	28.8%
	14		Eve Bolton	19,324	26.4%
	15		John Eby	16,074	21.9%
	16		Samantha Herd	13,937	19.0%
	17		Nick Spencer	9,274	12.7%
	18		Paul Mcghee	5,271	7.2%
	19		Gerry Kraus	4,628	6.3%
	20		William S. Mathews II	3,832	5.2%
	21		Robert J. Wilking	3,689	5.0%
	22		Ishaq Nadir	3,087	4.2%
	23		Eric Wilson	2,982	4.1%
	24		Michael Earl Patton	2,708	3.7%
	25		Curtis Wells	2,392	3.3%
	26		Robert Wilson	2,259	3.1%
	27		Ronnie Stallworth	2,175	3.0%
	28		Bill Barron	1,785	2.4%
	29		Bennie Green	1,741	2.4%
	30		Victor Phillips	1,638	2.2%
	31		Antonio Hodge	1,218	1.7%