Voting Competitions 2018

To encourage voting in the November 2018 election, I am funding prizes for these competitions between cities in Southeast Michigan:

Huntington Woods vs. Pleasant Ridge - one prize of $1000
Berkley vs. Ferndale vs. Oak Park vs. Royal Oak vs. Southfield - prizes of $1000 (first place), $500 (second place)

The prizes will be given to the recreation centers of the winning 3 cities. Turnout will be based on totals from the Oakland County Clerk Elections Division.

These cities had comparable turnouts in the November 2014 election:




November 2014 General Election
Votes Reg voters Turnout





Berkley 6,647 12,316 54.0%





Ferndale 7,022 15,739 44.6%





Huntington Woods 3,495 5,259 66.5%





Oak Park 10,303 23,377 44.1%





Pleasant Ridge 1,517 2,341 64.8%





Royal Oak 23,734 49,164 48.3%





Southfield 30,293 61,739 49.1%










Source: Oakland County Website, retrieved 11May18
See https://www.oakgov.com/clerkrod/elections/Pages/past_results.aspx


Why am I doing this? I am a pathologist who writes papers about Complexity Theory and Cancer. Complexity theory teaches us that what is important in creating vibrant systems, whether organisms, communities or economies, is having large numbers of "agents" that interact with each other in useful ways. For this reason, I am interested in efforts that get Michigan residents more involved in their communities, which includes voting.

After reading this article in the New York Times about colleges competing to raise voter turnout among students (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/us/students-voter-turnout.html), I decided to create a similar competition for cities. Although I will encourage the cities to increase voter turnout, I do not plan on organizing these activities myself.

Questions - contact me at NatPernick@gmail.com.