Get the college kids to vote! Or, the joys of “mail-in” votes

We had a terrific presentation Wednesday night by Superintendent Jim O’Neill at the high school PTO meeting. Afterwards, there was a lively discussion of what I think is a little known or understood voting option – absentee ballots.

Absentee ballots are important on two fronts, something I’ve only discovered in the last few weeks as I’ve gotten more involved with Education Counts. First, as the woman at the PTO meeting said, her husband uses them every year. Little known fact – you don’t actually have to be ‘absent’, or have a reason to be absent from the voting booth, to use an absentee ballot (which is why they're sometimes called "mail-in votes"). This was welcome news in our house, since my husband can come home anywhere from 6 – 8 pm at night (or later depending on the reliability of the trains, thank you very much NJ transit!). Since I’m likely to be out that day gently (I promise, gently!) encouraging people to vote, I’m thinking its one less thing I’ll have to do that day also.

The other front that’s worth keeping in mind is our favorite absent, adult population – college kids. I thought this was a good time to bring this up because my college age son is coming home today, and I’m assuming many of Chatham’s favorite sons and daughters will also be returning for spring break in the next few weeks. I would suggest that along with their favorite dinners you serve up to them a copy of the absentee ballot application. Or even better, put it on their pillow (I know they generally sleep for the first 24, or 48, or 72 hours). Feel free to fill most of it out for them and have the envelope to send it to the County Clerk’s office addressed and stamped (I think legally they only have to sign it).

After the application goes in, the actual ballot will be mailed to them at school and they can fill it out and mail it from there (although I’m sure a few gentle email, text message, or card reminders wouldn’t hurt. I usually accompany mine with cookies when I really want something done).

You can obtain the applications at the schools, or better yet, you can download and print them in the next 60 seconds from this website:

http://www.njelections.org/absentee_doe.html

The completed application should be mailed to:

Morris County Clerk
Absentee Ballot Applications
Hall of Records Administration Building
Court Street
P.O. Box 315
Morristown, NJ 07963-0315.

All of this information is on the Education Counts website also, at http://educationcounts.info/absentee.html

A couple caveats I learned today at a private EC meeting at a home in Wickham Woods:

1. This is a two step process. You have to send in the application, and then the ballot when it arrives
2. Once you commit to be an ‘absentee balloter’, you can’t change your mind on Election Day and go to the polls. At the polling place, your name will have something like ‘absentee balloter’ next to it. You have to send in the ballot you receive in the mail. So while I think it’s very convenient, make sure you’re committed to doing this.

What if your sleepy 18 – 22 year old thinks this issue doesn’t really concern them? You might not have this problem with Chatham schools alumni, but my 19 year old never went to school here. Sadly, he doesn’t worry, as I do, that his younger siblings get a good education and don’t spend their lives in my basement. As you might guess from my previous blog, I played the property values card with him. After telling him that his best chance for an inheritance some day was from the sale of whatever property his father and I owned, he was a little more motivated to send in a ballot. (I also warned him there was no point in bumping us off for this inheritance until the economy recovered).

So there’s my latest suggestion for increasing voter participation in the school vote and involving the newly enfranchised population of our municipalities in the political process.

Any comments?

Keeping Our Schools Tops Protects Our Property Values

Jonathan’s answer to my question about what would happen if the budget doesn’t pass is kind of scary. After the school board spent so much time combing over every cost and class size in the budget, and then kept the increase to only .4% (or $200K), I’m not inclined to send them back to the drawing board with the 2 town governments holding a red pen. It’s hard to imagine, with how carefully the School Board actually cut and combined services to come in with this budget, that sending it back to the towns won’t seriously harm school programming.

But if you don’t have kids in the school system, why should you care about this? Does this issue significantly affect people whose kids aren’t in the school system (or whose kids are close to leaving, as mine are)?

You bet it does. Let me speak from my own personal experience.

My husband was relocated to Manhattan from Canada in 2007. Manhattan! We had no idea where we wanted to live. It was overwhelming – people suggested Connecticut and the counties above New York City, Long Island, and the city itself. We could have lived anywhere.

We knew we wanted to be able to easily drive back toward Buffalo where we were originally from, wanted to be near a transit line, and wanted to be near a particular church denomination. That narrowed it down to a very wide range of places in New Jersey. We had friends in Westfield, Bergen County, Princeton – narrower, but still a lot of choices. What to do?

I also have teenaged children, so the schools were going to be the deciding factor for us. So we toured schools (one school system told us they wouldn’t give us a tour unless we had a signed house contract in hand – we crossed them off our list!)

Looking at Chatham was an afterthought – my realtor lives here, and I looked at it for that reason only. But after Mr. LaSusa (high school principal) gave my daughter and me our tour, we walked out of the high school, looked at each other and both said – we love this place! And so Chatham it was.

Later we looked at Chatham houses until our heads almost exploded. When we eventually closed on our house, it had been on the market for a whole year and the price we paid was 30% below the original asking price.

What’s my point? Like an area with a great park or a great shore or a great shopping center, the Chatham schools are one of our area’s most significant attractions. Demographers will tell you that young families with kids buy houses as they turn over. Those families can buy here, and keep your housing values up (our house price would have slid further if we hadn’t bought it) or go elsewhere (we could easily have bought in Summit and gotten everything we were looking for).

So if you’re thinking you won’t be in your house forever (and who ever knows the reality of that), it seems to me that getting out and voting YES to the school budget is one of the most important and cost effective things you can do these days to preserve the value of your home and your municipalities. I want the next new family who tours a Chatham school to walk out of it and say ‘We love this place!’ too.

Any comments or personal experiences on this subject?

-Karen J

Education Counts

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