It was a simple enough question, posed recently in an e-mail by a Butler Eagle reader.

“When we have three vacancies in the Butler County Commissioners office and we have to fill those three positions, why don’t we have the right to vote for three replacements?” he asked. “The Election Bureau says we can only vote for two. Why can’t we vote for three? This seems to be a ploy to vote along party lines rather than for individuals.”

The writer added he could not get a satisfactory explanation from the Election Bureau, local political leaders or even state-level officers of his own political party.

Some research turned up the short, technical answer: You get two votes because the state says so.

The County Code Act of 1955, which established the rules of political succession for Pennsylvania counties 60 years ago, states that three commissioners will be elected in each county every four years; each voter will cast ballots for no more than two persons; and the three individuals with the highest number of votes win the election.

However, the short answer doesn’t suffice. “Because I said so” was not a satisfactory reply when we were children, and “because the state said so” is even less so now.

While the county code does not explain the intentions behind the two-votes rule, we can infer that it guarantees representation for constituents who are not in the majority party.

It means that to an extent, it is as our reader suspects: a ploy to get us to vote along party lines rather than voting for individuals.

The ploy is to prevent a one-party monopoly; to give a voice to constituents of the minority party in every county. Without it, a write-in candidate could result in a one-party board of commissioners.

However, the two-vote provision does not guarantee anything beyond minority representation. Keep in mind that it brought us the current board, complete with minority commissioner Jim Eckstein, who frequently has been at contentious loggerheads with majority commissioners Bill McCarrier and Dale Pinkerton.

Contention sometimes is a virtue, and a deft minority commissioner can remind the majority that they all work for the same constituents.

But it becomes a disservice when the confrontations get personal and disrespectful — as they frequently have these past four years.

Pinkerton and McCarrier did not run for re-election. Eckstein finished last in the May Democratic primary.

The bottom line: Today each of us has two votes for the three-member board of county commissioners that will govern us for the next four years. Let’s cast our votes wisely.