Petitions, referenda, and voter registration
Oak Ridge is in the midst of the 20-day drive to collect enough petition signatures to force a referendum on the proposed bond issue for the Crestpointe shopping center.
As a general rule, I don’t think that voters should be able to insist on voting on individual financial decisions by elected officials. (At the February 19th Council meeting, I urged Council to delay a vote on the bond resolution, in hopes that we could avoid a referendum. I actually hoped that with another month’s time, four of them might decide to oppose the project, or there would be an alternative proposal available for them to consider.) I do, however, believe in systems of “checks and balances” in government, and the Tennessee law that allows for voters to petition for a referendum on a bond issue provides one important “check” on the decisions made by elected officials. The law doesn’t make it easy to call for a referendum (it’s not easy to gather the signatures of 10% of a community’s registered voters in just 20 days), which assures that this mechanism will be used only in extraordinary situations — when voters feel that their elected officials are making a serious mistake.
I consider the Crestpointe proposal to be a sufficiently extraordinary situation that I have been carrying petitions around town, and otherwise supporting the petition campaign. I expect that petitioners will be successful in gathering at least 2000 valid signatures, so the voters will get to decide this issue in June.
In the course of petitioning, I have started to take special notice of the number of registered voters who don’t live here any more — and have not voted here since some time in the 1990s. These include folks who moved out of the area, as well as Oak Ridge kids who registered here when they were 18, but have long since established new residences in other parts of the country. I believe it used to be that Tennessee purged the records of people who had not voted recently, but current law requires that election commissions keep a voter on the list until they receive written confirmation that the voter has died, moved out of the area, wants to be removed from the voter list, has been convicted of an “infamous crime,” or has changed their name (other than by marriage) and failed to inform the election commission. The law does include a provision allowing the election commission to investigate by sending “confirmation notices”, but it’s pretty cumbersome: “If the voter fails to respond to a confirmation notice, and if the voter fails to otherwise update the voter’s registration over a period of two consecutive regular November elections following the date the notice was first sent.” (Since November elections happen only in even-numbered years, this process takes a bare minimum of two years.)
I’m very glad to know that people aren’t losing their right to vote without good reason. However, it occurs to me that those extra names on the voter list inflates the total number of voters. In a normal election, that reduces the reported voter turnout percentage, but otherwise it makes little difference. When applied to a petition that must be signed by 10% of voters, however, it inflates the number of required signatures – raising the bar even higher than lawmakers intended. Harrumph!
Furthermore, I can’t help but recall that failure to remove people from voter lists in a timely manner sometimes leads to situations in which corrupt politicians “vote the graveyard.” I hope our local election commissions are working to avert electoral fraud by mailing out “confirmation notices” to those folks who I believe to be phantom voters. (Additionally, future petitioners will be grateful.)
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