SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO FIGHT CITY HALL

PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

Managing Editor

Bernard Rous

Editorial Board

Natalee Addison

Laraine Chaberski

Toniette H. Duncan

Charles W. Powers

Barbara Ley Toffler

Supporters

Denise Belcher

Juanita Brown

Laraine Chaberski

Margot Embree Fisher

Gail Gordon

Guy Thomas Lauture

Laverne Lightburn

Micki Shilan

Gloria Wilson

Contributors

Bettina Hempel

Henry Pruitt

Howard Rose

Advisors

Theodora Smiley Lacey

Loretta Weinberg

Contents

Petition Status: One Town One Vote: A Synopsis, a New Outcome?

Reasons for Rejection
Lawsuit Status
Call for Recusal of Town Attorney
Council Opposition - Pagan Video

Press Release - One Town One Vote

Democracy Depends on Us! - Juanita Brown

Announcements

MLK Birthday Committee Event

Upcoming events

One Town One Vote: A Synopsis, a New Outcome?

A few months ago, we at Teaneck Voices heard about One Town One Vote (OTOV), the grassroots effort to place a referendum question on the November 2^nd ballot asking Teaneck voters to approve moving Teaneck’s non-partisan town council elections from May to November while retaining our prized non-partisan status. We were excited to be one of the first of many organizations to partner with OTOV in this effort. We have been proud to support this change of election date to make it easier, more efficient and more convenient for voters to participate in elections, while saving the taxpayers money.

On June 16th, One Town One Vote met with the Town Clerk to clarify petition requirements. Its petition was reviewed by the Clerk and Town Attorney. No instructions for correction were issued.

On July 9th, One Town One Vote and its partners submitted 1350 signatures to the Town Clerk, well in excess of the 791 they believed was the minimum required by law.

On July 29^th, we were all astonished to hear that the Municipal Clerk, Doug Ruccione, had turned down the petition. The letter of rejection claimed that:

the petition forms were worded incorrectly
the minimum number of required signatures was not 791, but 1,977
and more than half of the signatures submitted were deemed invalid anyway

The Clerk decided to reject all the electronic signatures, despite the Governor’s order that allowed them to be collected during the State of Emergency due to COVID. He also decided that more than 300 of those signed by hand failed to match the signatures on file in the voter registration system.

Few of us sign our names exactly the same way we did yesterday, let alone years or even decades ago. The Clerk told one frustrated resident that her signature had been rejected because he had determined that it had “differing swoops and cross-throughs” from the one on file. Using this kind of logic, the Clerk rejected more than one out of three signatures from individuals that even he acknowledged were registered voters in Teaneck.

Following this rejection, One Town One Vote was given the ten days allowed by law to collect the additional signatures demanded by the town. A grassroots army of more than 60 volunteers collected nearly 2,100 signatures in a week and a half!

After receiving this second batch of additional signatures on August 9th, the Clerk was allowed five days by law to review the amended filing. On Tuesday, the ninth day of his review process, he told the One Town One Vote committee that he had only reviewed about 650 of the 2,100 signatures but had already decided that all the petitions were insufficient because the petition form did not have the required wording.

The letter said that the petition needed to be submitted as if it were an ordinance. However, One Town One Vote was petitioning to have the question go straight to the ballot in the form of a standard ballot question. An ordinance would have existed only if the Town Council had agreed to vote positively on the election move from May to November. If Council had done so, then it would write an ordinance and vote on it. And there would be no need for a ballot question. However, six of the seven members of the Teaneck Council are already on record strenuously opposing the ballot question, so no ordinance was involved in any way.

The petition is worded correctly in the standard form of a ballot question.

Even though the letter was signed by the Town Clerk, Doug Ruccione, the legal language makes it obvious that it was written by the Town Attorney. Town Attorney John Shahdanian asserts that he works for the Council. But he is now serving as the Town Clerk's attorney in this matter. To serve as the independent election official for Teaneck, Doug Ruccione should be getting unbiased legal advice from an independent attorney. Attorney John Shahdanian has a conflict of interest and should have, and should now, recuse himself from the case. Teaneck ought to provide the Clerk with an independent counsel.

On Thursday, August 19, 2021, One Town One Vote and its attorney took action, filing papers in Superior Court in Hackensack asking that the judge accept the signed petitions and put the question on the ballot in November to let the voters decide for themselves. One Town One Vote, joined collaboratively by New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center as co-counsel, argues that the town’s demands contradict state law and that the number of acceptable petition signatures submitted far exceeds even the Clerk's demand to provide nearly 2,000 signatures.

It is unfortunate that One Town One Vote was forced to go to court to take action to defend the civil rights of the thousands of residents whose signatures have been rejected by the Clerk and to fight this act of voter suppression in what once was the Model Town of the United States. The small group will face massive legal bills to cover the cost of this litigation.

We encourage you to visit http://www.OneTownOneVote.com to learn more about their goal of making voting easier for Teaneck residents. Please help contribute towards the expense of taking court action to protect your right to choose for yourself whether elections should be moved from May to November.

Listen to Councilman Pagan Stoke Fears of a Takeover by Outsiders:

One Town One Vote Press Release

For Immediate Release Thursday August 19, 2020

One Town One Vote Files Suit to to Get Referendum on Ballot in November

The grassroots One Town One Vote initiative has met with stiff resistance from the Teaneck Township council since its inception.

The group has twice submitted a petition to the Teaneck Township Clerk seeking a ballot referendum that would allow the voters of Teaneck to determine whether they want the town to continue to pay for a separate stand-alone Town Council election in May, or to consolidate the municipal election with the general elections in November.

On both occasions, the Clerk has rejected the petition, citing a patchwork of conflicting statutes to support his decision. The majority of the Teaneck Town Council, which appoints the Clerk, is vehemently opposed to changing the date of the municipal election.

The attorney representing One Town One Vote has submitted a letter brief and complaint to the Bergen County Assignment Judge, which describes the Clerk’s decisions as capricious and arbitrary, as well as clearly erroneous under the law.

The letter states, in part, that “By virtue of his actions—and inactions—Teaneck’s Township Clerk... has deprived these citizens of one of their most valued civil rights: the ability to petition the government for a redress of their grievances through the initiative process.”

The letter goes on to note that the key issue is the right of the people of Teaneck to have a say at the ballot box. “[The Clerk’s] efforts to thwart the people’s right on this matter can and should be enjoined by the Court, with the end result being that the question placed on the ballot for the voters, and not an unelected municipal clerk, to decide.”

According to Senator Loretta Weinberg, “This is a civil rights issue. The Clerk’s decision disenfranchises the people of Teaneck, who deserve the opportunity to vote yes or no on this important question.” She added, “We are left with no choice but to take this matter to court.”

Sen. Weinberg is one of the committee of five well-respected One Town One Vote petitioners, who represent the diversity of Teaneck. The others are civil rights icon Theodora Lacey, youth organizer Teji Vega, community organizer Reshma Khan, and Teaneck International Film Festival director Jeremy Lentz.

Mr. Lentz echoed Sen. Weinberg’s comments. “Voter suppression has come to Teaneck. These days, Teaneck is looking no different than Georgia or Texas.”

National Issues Make Themselves Felt in Teaneck

Our Democracy Depends on Us!

Juanita Brown

Right at this very moment, our democracy is under threat. The voter suppression laws being enacted in the United States of America are nothing less than the resurgence of the Jim Crow laws of the past.

As I see our Democracy being trampled upon, I’m inspired to join the fight, any fight, for freedom.

Freedom is our right to vote as we please and make a difference in our world. If we, Americans, living in the so-called most democratic country in the world, allow our right to vote to be taken away from us, what kind of example are we setting?

With so many people in the world looking to us for inspiration and hope, the world seems doomed for tyranny and dictatorship unless we overcome every attempt to suppress the vote.

America, we can’t let that happen!

The Electoral College has become a political farce that is used to discourage and deflate the value of the voting process and to subvert the will of the people. Who decides what is, and who runs the Electoral College?

Right now, those wishing to maintain the status quo are running scared because they know the power we have if we exercise our right to vote.

Juneteenth was and is very important. But not only as Black history. In declaring it a national holiday for the first time this past June, America officially acknowledged that this commemoration of the end of slavery is part of American history.

We must not let our past hold us back, but lead us to a better and brighter future.

What we really need is federal legislation banning any and all efforts to suppress the vote. If our President had signed a bill making it a crime to prevent anyone from voting, or making it more difficult to vote - now that would have truly been the most important progressive action since the Voting Rights Act of 1965!

The most recent failure of the US Senate to pass the “For the People” act is atrocious and unacceptable. Laws that are passed with bipartisan acceptance are good. But the best laws are those that benefit everyone and are best “For All the People”!

We need to become unified and show our strength in our diversity. After all, we are more alike than unalike.