1991 election results anomaly

When I voted in a City of Austin election in 1991, I seem to remember thinking that because of the way the paper ballot was formatted, many voters might miss some of the races. (Best I can recall, there were two columns of races, but it wasn't necessarily obvious at first glance that the second column contained separate races to vote on.) When the results were published, that seemed to confirm that hypothesis. I just came across the newspaper clipping I made of the election results. I contacted the City Clerk's office, but they don't have an image of the 1991 ballot. Here are the election results, total for each race, and each race was city-wide (every voter eligible to vote in every race), and every race had at least two candidates.

50,662 • Mayor
23,926 • Place 2
40,128 • Place 5
40,582 • Place 6
52,549 • Prop 1
Starting here, the vote totals bounce reliably between ~51k and 45k.
50,526 • Prop 2
44,557 • Prop 3
51,229 • Prop 4
46,029 • Prop 5
51,341 • Prop 6
45,645 • Prop 7

No excellent conclusions can be drawn without an image of the ballot and just relying on my 32-year-old memory, but the numbers really do seem to fit the pattern that I remembered. Comments?