Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Voting History of Brandywine School District Referenda

I thought that it would be appropriate to gather some data on Brandywine School District referenda since they have scheduled another one on June 4th to raise taxes because the April one failed to pass. The voting records can be found at the Delaware Department of Elections starting with April 2007 and they go back to 1987 (follow the links inside for earlier results).



Here is the data in table form. Red means failed and green means passed, before 2007 the last referenda to fail was in March of 1987. There was a second one that year in October that passed. Is the school district trying this strategy again? Will they keep having referenda until they pass?



I have also plotted the results back to 1987 to illustrate some points. None of the votes after 2000 were close until this last one in 2007 that did not pass.

My main issues with the referenda are that they seems to think it is alright to have another vote even though the voters already said no, and that the district doesn't inspire confidence in the voters that they will use the money wisely. I will be voting no.

1 comment:

Paul Smith Jr. said...

If I remember correctly, the school district is allowed three attempts to pass a referendum before they have to try alternative means. It's always struck me as a stacking of the deck in favor of tax increases. If they're going to have this sort of system, then they should at least do a "best of 5" playoff type of process, rather than a one-sided triple elimination process. It seems designed to attempt to wear down the opposition to a tax increase.