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Letter: Voting station at school event seems unfair
Op-Ed · August 31, 2017
When it has never been easier for anybody to vote, why does the West Branch School Board hold satellite voting events?
An easier question is why they didn’t hold one in my garage at 2:00 am on a Tuesday morning? The answer of course is that nobody would show up. And that is my point. By holding satellite voting events at school locations during school activities it is an almost certainty that people would take the opportunity to vote in as much as they are already there. I call this manipulating the voting process and it shouldn’t happen.
The School Board and the Administration held two satellite events on the first referendum vote. I believe the Board and Administration knew the cost of the satellite voting was substantially higher per vote than for the general election date and chose to do it again. The Cedar County Auditor’s office can verify the total cost and the satellite cost. That being the case why would they again spend money on a satellite event when it is terrible waste of school district money?
From my perspective, I believe people going to a school event are more than likely parents with kids at those events and are therefore more likely to vote “yes” for the referendum. I believe the ratio of yes to no votes at the satellite events was probably higher than during the general polling. If anybody knows how to prove that one way or the other, please let us all know because if I am right it would pretty much prove a bias place of voting.
So why did the School Board hold satellite voting when it meant spending more school district funds than was necessary? I believe it was in support of the referendum to garner more “yes” votes. Not that I can prove that, but I wonder if that inadvertently violated the Iowa Professionals Code of Ethics.
The Code allows school boards to spend district funds on developing a plan and informing the voting public about the plan but they cannot spend district funds in support of the referendum. If the Code of Ethics was violated, the referendum should be invalidated.
We all need to draw our own conclusions about this foolish waste of spending on satellite voting but I think it is fairly transparent and urge you all to vote NO to more than tripling our current debt service tax levy.
Rod Hanson
Atalissa
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