The final verdict? Not enough votes cast. From The Day:
New London voters who turned out at the polls Tuesday favored amending the city’s charter to change its form of government to an elected mayor with an elected Board of Finance, but the measure failed because not enough votes were cast.The unofficial count was 1,174 votes (12 percent of the city’s registered voters) for revising the charter, and 736 against the proposal. At least 15 percent of registered city voters would have had to vote “yes” for the measure to pass.
This is terribly disappointing. 15% should not be that hard to muster, especially since local media outlets like The Day covered the story thoroughly.
So no change in New London. I wonder if these changes will be put before voters again in the future. Maybe in November?
Source
Stoll, Elaine. “Charter-Revision Bid Fails In New London.” New London Day 13 March, 2007.
3 responses so far ↓
It is hard to get voters to come out for special elections. Most referendums and special elections fail because of insufficient voter turnout. You then have the case of the measure ‘winning’ the vote but losing because not enough voted for the measure. Staying home is an effective ‘NO’ vote and much easier to do for the voter. There was a similar situation in Waterford some years ago when the vote to reduce to three from five elementary schools in town ‘won’ the majority vote, but stilll lost because not enough voters had turned out and voted for the reduction. The town later made the decision to go the three schools for different reasons without a referendum so in that case the side that ‘won’ but lost, ultimately won. In the New London case, I suspect that it will take another year of delay (election year) and the city council elected next November will form a new charter revision commission to start the process all over again. Since the Editor of the DAY editorial page is retiring next month, the DAY support may or may not be forthcoming for the next effort.
I don’t anticipate another charter revision commission anytime soon. The NL city council, having successfully killed this proposal (they delayed approval of the charter commission’s work just long enough to keep it off the ballot last Nov.), has no intention of bringing this back from the dead.
Wtfdnucsailor makes a good point about the Day paper. If there was another elected mayor proposal floated, I’m sure the Day would support it. But with Morgan McGinley & co. retiring, would the paper really run approximately 8,000 stories and editorials on the subject, as they did this time? I doubt it.
It’s sad to see New London get stuck in the mud like this. Maybe a new council in November will help things.
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