On November 3, 2009, the Washington Post ran an article entitled “More local races joining November’s big tickets, by James Hohmann. Although the source is not cited, there was one paragraph about the Christiansburg referendum:
At the end of the day, Christiansburg voters did have their say. Nearly 90% of voters supported moving the town elections to November.
I was pretty sure that there was enough citizen interest to move the vote based upon the number of citizens that I have communicated with over the last several months. However, I never dreamed the results would be such a landslide.
The results of the referendum and other local elections were delayed when the Registrar’s Office started putting the first votes into the spreadsheet provided by the state and some of the numbers did not look right. It seems that the total voting population of the County was being used in those ballot issues set for Blacksburg and Christiansburg only. It took a while for the Registrar’s Office to get with the state and have the spreadsheet corrected but the totals presented on the State Board of Elections website today are correct.
My thanks to the Registrar’s Office for catching the problem and getting it fixed before a lot of erroneous numbers got published, creating chaos.
I would also like to thank all of the candidates (win, lose, or draw) for being willing to tackle the tough issues and being a source of information for voters.
Finally, my thanks to the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County for setting new standards for providing citizens with information through their forums and website (lwvmcva.org). If you want to be involved in voter education, voting rights, local/state/national issues, membership with the League of Women Voters is open to all. Thanks to those people who contributed to the League of Women Voters and made it possible to produce all of the printed materials. For more information on joining the LWV’s or making a donation, go to: League of Women Voters of Montgomery County Virginia.
CAMBRIA DEPOT MUSEUM
from original depotdazed.com site:
Anonymous Reader says:
Your link to election results is titled “unofficial” and it is sort of sad to see less than 40% of all eligible voters bothered to make up their mind – & vote. It also shows Mr. Session has more ballots cast in his favor but area media outlets are saying there was an error and the incumbent won that school board seat. Were all the mistakes at the state level or did someone make a major error in reporting this race?
Reply: There were errors on the spreadsheet at state level and a typo that may have been at local level (I’m not positive about that last one. I’m waiting to see if there are any changes at the SBE level tomorrow.
Hornet says:
“many voters are expected to oppose a ballot proposal” – who did the author talk to? What a sloppy line and reporting. Okay, technically 600 could be many. Good on ya, Cburg!
Reply: I think this may indicate that somebody somewhere is not quite on the pulse of the town citizens. Probably the most important issues and the one that was certainly bi-partisan, citizens did not realize the town had to pay to have those ‘special elections’ and taxpayers do not want money wasted. A lot of people liked having the elections be a special town event in May, until they found out their tax money paid for it. A lot of people just wanted things to change period. A lot of people were unaware that they had the right through referendum to get the changes that they wanted. Referendums can be very useful devices for the public to make sure government is doing what is in the best interest of citizens. A vote is a powerful thing. Personally, I was amazed at how this issue affected turnout. I knew that the people I spoke with ran about 10 to 1 in favor of moving the vote. I just never expected a record turn out for voting on a Christiansburg issue.