False Claim #7: “Incumbents and Special Interests Want to Deny Ridgewood the Right to Vote”

TRUTH: This claim is so false, it’s absurd. No one tried to stop the five One Village One Vote members from getting their question on the ballot.  The Village Clerk‘s actions will be adjudicated in the Appellate Court on the merits of the law. No residents were involved in that whatsoever.

In truth, all of the incumbents, on both the Board of Education and the Village Council, stand to have their terms lengthened by six months if local elections are moved to November. When the Board of Education elections were moved to November in 2012, each Board member had their three year term lengthened by 6 months. When the Board of Education elections were moved back to April starting in 2019, the superintendent and Board of Education filed an injunction in the court preventing the 2019 Board of Education elections from taking place that year. That, in effect lengthened their terms an additional six months. So as of right now, those three year terms have become four year terms, simply by moving the election date back and forth. If the ballot question prevails and once again, our Board of Education elections are moved to November, yet another 6 months will be added to the current Board members’ terms. One of those members would wind up increasing the 3 year term she was elected to serve by 50%, bringing it to 4 ½ years.