Important Update
I believe the REFERENDUM PASSED. I believe the charter is being MISINTERPRETED to achieve a certain result. I began this conversation with the charter revision commission starting last March, 2024, because they too did not understand it. Below I have shown a couple of examples to clarify this for everyone, but especially for our town attorney and council to consider.
I brought up this exact point during the charter revision commission meetings starting in March of 2024. I believe that section of the Charter has been MISINTERPRETED since 2006. The math of this is very simple, but people try to convolute the issue by misinterpreting it; there are 2, and only 2, requirements for a referendum to pass:
To prevent a small group of people from easily sinking budgets, AT LEAST 15% OF THE REGISTERED VOTERS MUST VOTE IN THE REFERENDUM,
and
THE MARGIN OF VICTORY MUST BE AT LEAST 15%.
Notice how this is mathematically distinct from "the margin of victory must be 15% of the number of registered voters". Look at a simple example: suppose the number of registered voters is 10,000. 15% of that is 1500 votes. By requirement 1, therefore, at least 1500 people must vote. For this example, pretend 2000 people actually voted, which is much more than the 1500 required. Now, suppose the vote turns out similarly to our current results, let's say 80% of the 2000 (which is 1600) vote NO, and obviously 20% (the other 400) vote YES. REQUIREMENT 2 IS SATISFIED, SINCE THE MARGIN BETWEEN 80% AND 20% IS MORE THAN 15% (it is 60%).
Contrast this with the current MISINTERPRETATION: they would want to say that the referendum failed, because the margin between the NO votes (1600) and YES votes (400), which is 1200 votes, 12% of the registered voters, is not 15% of the registered voters.
Do you see the difference and how mathematically incongruous that is? That was never the intent of the previous charter. They did not want whimsical or capricious referenda all the time, but it was not supposed to be impossible.
Look at the actual numbers for this current MISINTERPRETATION: 15% of the registered voters is about 2300 votes. To have a margin of 2300 votes, if 400 people voted YES, 2700 would have had to vote NO, meaning 3100 people would have had to vote. But that contradicts requirement 1, which only requires 2300 people to vote (15%). That creates an internal inconsistency within the charter. Hopefully this clarifies things. I believe THE REFERENDUM PASSED OVERWHELMINGLY (81% to 19%), satisfying requirement 2, and because more than 2300 votes were cast, satisfying requirement 1.
I look forward to this being reviewed and considered. I believe THE CHARTER IS BEING MISINTERPRETED. The math is unambiguously simple and obvious.
The charter revision commission wrestled with this and discussed it a lot. They concluded that the section 906 requirement was almost impossible to meet, was meant to mirror section 310, and therefore felt that was just one of many typos in the charter, perhaps from a previous draft. It is noteworthy that in the charter we hope to approve in November, they have fixed the language to require only a simple majority, with a minimum number of total votes to be cast. Just common sense: how can a vote result of 81% to 19% be considered a failure? Consider this additional example: suppose there had been 1000 YES votes. To have a plurality of 15% of registered voters (2300 votes), we would need 3300 NO votes, meaning a total turnout of 4300 votes. That number is rarely reached even in presidential election years, so it was certainly not the intent of the charter to require these large numbers.
-James Biffer