the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ , the Village of Ridgewood is currently appealing the Superior Court Judge Estella De La Cruz ruling that put the question to eliminate the school budget vote on the November ballot .
20-361 Authorize Payment of Attorney Fees – One Village, One Vote Lawsuit – Authorizes the payment of Attorney’s fees of $11,257.50 to the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the One Village, One Vote litigation known as Robert Fuhrman, et. al., vs. Heather Mailander, as ordered by Superior Court Judge Estella De La Cruz .
(UNOFFICIAL RESULTS) Village of Ridgewood
Contest: Municipal Question – Village of Ridgewood, VOTE FOR 1
Municipal Question – Village of Ridgewood
(VOTE FOR 1)
Candidate Name Total Votes Percentage
YES 7,143 58.56%
NO 5,055 41.44%
Will this never end? Why is the Village involved? Who is Heather Mailander risking her job for?
Sour grapes and sore losers.
They have to follow the law. The ordinance as written is not enforceable.
Good for the village to make sure this is all done right. The law reads pretty clear on number of signatures needed and the fact the change is an ordinance issue. Better to measure twice and cut once.
I don’t care one way or the other about this stupid ballot question. But I do care that those five people lied incessantly in order to get that yes vote. I hope this gets over turned in appeals court.
By popular vote the community wants a combined election. No matter how many signatures were requested, there is little doubt they would achieve the requirement since 7000+ people voted yes. For a non partisan town council, I don’t understand why the appeal. It’s things like this that point to corrupt council and special interest groups that like to control the narrative. Which is leading to a fractured community.
please enlighten us as to what the council has to do with the school board ?
@Taxpayer — of the 7,000 people who voted yes, what percentage actually knew that they would be giving up their right to vote on the school budget?
I randomly asked this question to about 12 people who voted, and five people didn’t truly understand what they were voting for. Assuming an unbiased sample, and if we were to use this sample to generalize to the border population, that brings the 60% popular vote down to certainly less than 50%. Your argument falls apart.
Regardless, if the referendum required a certain number of signatures, and if the appropriate number of signatures was not achieved, then the vote must be nullified. The law is the law.
Taxpayer so you are suggesting that even though the law was not followed, the outcome is ok by you?
Jon- regardless of how many signatures were supposed to be collected to put the question on the ballot, it ended up on there, and people voted. Why would we throw out the wishes of the voters because there were initially fewer signatures than might have been required? Even if that was the case, far more than that have now made their preference known.
More than twice as many people voted “yes” on this ballot proposal than for any sitting Council member. Case closed. The will of the people…
Jon, are you saying voters should be disenfranchised because they didn’t know what they were voting for? Huh?
And that 7,000+ legally cast ballots should be nullified because of a technicality that was already thrown out on appeal three times by a Superior Court Judge?
How does that promote democracy?
fraud does not promote democracy
People are only responsible for their own actions when a person’s failure to do so is advantageous to conservatives. Sort of like, we cannot have gun control because “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” attitude, or that there is no need for CFPB because if people we’re just smarter and read the fine print, they wouldn’t need to be protected from capitalist greed.
It is up to the voter to vet what is on the ballot, from the presidential election, to state questions and local muni questions. No one is under obligation to draw a picture and explain. Oh wait, someone already does that in town.
“Jon, are you saying voters should be disenfranchised because they didn’t know what they were voting for? Huh?”
No, I am not suggesting that. What I’m saying is that lots of people (for whatever reason) apparently didn’t know what they were voting for. They thought they were voting for “A” and “B”, when actually they were voting for “A”, “B” and “C” (with “C” being loss of the check on the school budget).
Anyway, regardless of *how* people voted, if the question made its way on the ballot under false/insufficient pretenses, then the results should ABSOLUTELY be reversed on appeal. If someone mistakenly allowed the question, then a reversal is in order.
Follow the law, get the proper number of signatures (no, votes do not count since they’re the proverbial “fruit of the poison tree”) and try again in the next election cycle.