But there was a sort of Best Board Member vote at Apple’s (AAPL) shareholder meeting this week, and the outcome was a surprise.

According to the SEC Form 8-K filed on Thursday, Steve Jobs was re-elected to the board of his own company with nearly 3.5 million fewer votes than Ronald D. Sugar.

Sugar, for those who don’t know their aerospace industry executives, is the the former CEO of Northrop Grumman (NOC) who was selected in November to fill one of the seats on Apple’s board left vacant by the death of  Jerry York last March and the forced departure of Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt in 2009.

Who knows what was going on in the minds of the shareholders who produced the vote counts graphed below the fold — or even if they have minds, since 70% of Apple’s shares are held by institutions. But according to the Form 8-K, nearly 4.8 million shares were cast against re-upping Steve Jobs. The least popular board member, by this measure, is Avon (SVP) CEO Andrea Jung — for the second year in a row.

The official tallies:

Thanks to setteB.IT for the tip.

Also on Fortune.com:

• A birthday card for Steve Jobs
• The speech of Steve Jobs’ life
• Apple shareholders reject succession proposal
  

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]