False Claim #6: “You have the power to change the voting cycle by signing our Petition.”

TRUTH: This petition was circulated under the premise of misleading, and in some cases, flat out false information. An important piece of this, left out of their narrative, is that Ridgewood already tried holding our Board of Education elections in November and that experiment failed miserably. Turnout for our Board of Education elections held in November for five years spanning 2014 -2018 dropped. One of our lowest Board of Education election turnouts ever, 12.5%, was in November 2015. Overall, turnout averaged about 2% lower in November that in April.

On top of that, there were no contested Board of Education elections for four of the five years they were held in November. There were four years in a row with no budget vote and no one running against the incumbents, rendering any vote cast completely ineffective of the outcome. Basically, our voting rights on Board of Education matters were nullified.