Tag: District 2

Political brief: Iversen runs for county commissioner, Zulich takes formal step for city council caucus

Sydney Zulich addresses the Bloomington city council. (June 14, 2023)
Peter Iversen speaks at an Oct. 3, 2022 county council campaign forum.

Political news from the end of this week included city as well as county campaigns for office.

Sydney Zulich has filed her paperwork to stand as a candidate in the Democratic Party’s city council ballot vacancy caucus, according to election office staff.

The city council vacancy on the Nov. 7 ballot stems from David Wolfe Bender’s decision to resign as the Democratic Party’s nominee for District 6.  Bender won the May 2 primary as the only candidate on the ballot.

No Republican declared for District 6, but the GOP has until July 3 to caucus in a candidate of their own.

The Democratic Party’s caucus is set for June 30 at 4:30 p.m. in city council chambers at city hall.

Looking ahead to the 2024 Democratic Party primary, Peter Iversen has filed the paperwork to form a committee to run for the District 2 Monroe County commissioner seat.

Iversen is currently in his fourth year of service on the seven-member county council, which is the county’s fiscal body. Continue reading “Political brief: Iversen runs for county commissioner, Zulich takes formal step for city council caucus” →

Bloomington primary election 2023 photos: A look back to the distant past of one week ago

Wildlife was not allowed to vote at Bloomington High School South—there’s no election-deering allowed within 50 feet of the polls. (May 2, 2023)
Don Griffin (May 2, 2023)
Kerry Thomson (May 2, 2023)
Don Griffin (May 2, 2023)
Kerry Thomson (May 2, 2023)

For the B Square’s day-of election coverage last Tuesday, words and numbers took priority over photographs.

But a complete record surely demands some photos, even if they’re late.

In that spirit, below is a set of photographs, in mostly chronological order, as they were taken during the day—at different polling places and then at the Cascades Inn where the local Democrats gathered to celebrate their victories. Continue reading “Bloomington primary election 2023 photos: A look back to the distant past of one week ago” →

2023 primary election notebook: A closer look at results in Bloomington’s city council district races

The winners of the four contested Bloomington city council district races on Tuesday were Isabel Piedmont-Smith (District 1); Kate Rosenbarger (District 2); Hopi Stosberg (District 3); and Shruti Rana (District 4).

That’s an even split between two incumbents and two newcomers. The incumbents are Piedmont-Smith and Rosenbarger. The newcomers are Stosberg and Rana.

They’ll be the Democratic Party’s nominees in the Nov. 7 city elections.

Those basic results have been known since election night. In the meantime, The B Square has discerned a few noteworthy facts about the election numbers. Continue reading “2023 primary election notebook: A closer look at results in Bloomington’s city council district races” →

2023 Bloomington Democratic Party primary results: Thomson wins mayoral nomination, 5 of 9 councilmembers won’t return in 2024

On Tuesday, Kerry Thomson won a clear 10-point victory over second-place finisher Susan Sandberg in the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for mayor of Bloomington.

[.pdf file of 2023 unofficial primary election results]

Thomson did not get a majority of the 8,012 votes in the three-way race.

Thomson’s 3,444 votes gave her about 43 percent of the vote, compared to 33 percent (2,644) for Susan Sandberg and 24 percent (1,924) for Don Griffin.

No Republican has yet declared a candidacy for mayor and no independent candidate has submitted the required 352 signatures to qualify for the November ballot. To appear on the ballot as an independent candidate for mayor or city council, qualifying signatures  have to be submitted by June 30.

So it’s likely that Thomson will be the next mayor of Bloomington. Incumbent mayor John Hamilton did not seek re-election. Continue reading “2023 Bloomington Democratic Party primary results: Thomson wins mayoral nomination, 5 of 9 councilmembers won’t return in 2024” →

Alea iacta est: May 2, 2023 primary election results, served when ready

Primary Election Day polls for May 2, 2023 have now closed in Monroe County.

The cutoff time was 6 p.m., which made for a 12-hour voting day. But anyone in line by 6 p.m. has to be allowed to cast a ballot.

Bloomington voters are electing party nominees for mayor, clerk, and nine city council seats. Ellettsville voters are electing party nominees for clerk/treasurer and town council.

Preliminary results from Bloomington and Ellettsville precincts will be published as updates to this article as they are available.

Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne wrote in her 5 p.m. emailed message: “Please do not anticipate any results before 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m.”

Voters who joined the line just before the closing of the polls are just one reason that results can’t be reported immediately at 6 p.m..

Geography also plays a role. There’s some physical distance that has to be covered, when teams from Primary Election Day polling locations across Bloomington and Ellettsville pack up their ballots, the memory devices from the ballot scanners, and other election documentation, and turn in the whole package to Election Central. Continue reading “Alea iacta est: May 2, 2023 primary election results, served when ready” →

City Primary Election Day for Bloomington, Ellettsville: Polls are OPEN

Election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets (May 2, 2023).
Election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets (May 2, 2023).
Before polls opened, inside the election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets (May 2, 2023).

“The polls are open and all is well.”

That was the opening line from an email sent by Monroe County clerk Nicole Browne at 6:09 a.m today, Tuesday, May 2.

Bloomington voters are electing party nominees for mayor, clerk, and nine city council seats. Ellettsville voters are electing party nominees for clerk/treasurer and town council.

At 6 a.m. the election inspector for the voting location that’s set up at the elections operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets opened the door and announced the opening of the polls, as required by state election law.

No one was standing in line to vote at 6 a.m. sharp. The first voter arrived at 6:11 a.m., and asked, “Where is everybody?” before disappearing inside to cast his ballot. Four minutes later, he reappeared then drove away.

The election operations building at 3rd and Walnut streets, which is the former NAPA auto parts store, is the voting location for seven precincts: B-03, B-07, B-22, P-06, P-08, P-15, and P-31.

Indiana’s secretary of state has set up a voter portal where you can check your polling site for primary Election Day, which is May 2.

The B Square will update this article with vignettes from different polling locations throughout the day. Continue reading “City Primary Election Day for Bloomington, Ellettsville: Polls are OPEN” →

Bloomington city council District 2 Democratic Party Primary: Kate Rosenbarger, Sue Sgambelluri

The Democratic Party’s May 2 primary election for city council District 2 is a choice between Kate Rosenbarger and Sue Sgambelluri. There is no Republican candidate in District 2.

This write-up provides specific background on the District 2 city council primary race as well as general background.

April 20 is the last day to apply for an absentee ballot. Application for an absentee ballot, verification of voter registration, and a preview of the ballot are available through the Indiana secretary of state’s voter information portal.

Early voting started on April 4 at Monroe County’s election operations center, which is located at Walnut and 3rd streets. Continue reading “Bloomington city council District 2 Democratic Party Primary: Kate Rosenbarger, Sue Sgambelluri” →

Chatbot vs. Bloomington candidates for city office

With each election cycle, the League of Women Voters hosts a website with candidate profiles. It’s called Vote 411.

Chatbot icon with text: As an AI language model, I cannot seek elected office in the city of Bloomington, Indiana.

Included below are links to all the LWV profiles for all candidates in Bloomington’s city primary elections—for mayor, clerk, and city council.

The Vote 411 profiles include the answers that candidates have written to questions posed by LWV.

What if the same questions were posed to a chatbot that has been trained on a giant corpus of text, to respond to conversational prompts?

The B Square posed the LWV’s questions to ChatGPT, which is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by a company called OpenAI. It was released late last year. (GPT stands for Generative Pre-training Transformer.)

The LWV questions were given minor tweaks, like swapping in “Bloomington, Indiana” for “the city” to give ChatGPT a shot at providing answers that reflect the unique circumstances of Bloomington.

Another tweak: In places where the LWV questions use the second-person pronoun “you,” some kind of passive voice construction was swapped in. That’s because ChatGPT tends to respond with a disclaimer of sorts when asked about itself. For example, “As an AI language model, I have never tasted maple syrup, …”

Readers are invited to use ChatGPT as a kind of baseline, to judge the answers given by candidates. Is a given candidate’s answer better than a chatbot’s? Continue reading “Chatbot vs. Bloomington candidates for city office” →

2023 Elections | Day One notebook: 9 file paperwork, including 3 known mayoral candidates

Wednesday was the first day it was possible to file the forms to declare an official candidacy for municipal elections in Indiana’s 2023 election cycle.

In Monroe County, nine candidates got that paperwork task out of the way on Day One.

Filing their CAN-42 forms on Wednesday, in order of filing, were: Kerry Thomson (Bloomington mayor); Susan Sandberg (Bloomington mayor); Sue Sgambelluri (Bloomington city council District 2); Don Griffin (Bloomington mayor); Ron Smith (Bloomington city council District 3); William Ellis (Ellettsville town council Ward 2); Jonas Schrodt (Bloomington city council at large); Brett Heinisch (Bloomington city council, District 3); and Nicole Bolden (Bloomington city clerk).

Ellis and Heinisch filed to run in the Republican Party’s primary. The others filed to run in the Democratic Party’s primary. Continue reading “2023 Elections | Day One notebook: 9 file paperwork, including 3 known mayoral candidates” →

Sgambelluri takes city council District 2 over Guenther by 26-point margin

Sue Sgambelluri at Monroe County Democratic Party Headquarters on election night. (Dave Askins/Beacon)
Sue Sgambelluri at Monroe County Democratic Party Headquarters on election night. (Dave Askins/Beacon)
Andrew Guenther (R) at the Oct. 28, 2019 candidate forum.

Spirits were high Tuesday night at Monroe County Democratic Party headquarters on Madison Street. Both Democrats in the only contested races for Bloomington’s municipal elections hand just won seats on the city council in 2020. Ron Smith won a three-way race in District 3.

Sue Sgambelluri won her race in District 2 against Republican Party nominee Andrew Guenther. She received 365 votes (63 percent) to Guenther’s 218 (37 percent). That included a plurality for Sgambelluri in each of the district’s six precincts, among early voters and Election Day voters alike.

The closest tally inside the district was the one-vote margin in Bloomington 14 precinct among Election Day voters—Guenther had 19 votes compared to Sgambelluri’s 20. Continue reading “Sgambelluri takes city council District 2 over Guenther by 26-point margin” →