EDGEMONT INCORPORATION IS HEADING TO A REFERENDUM: CAN IT BE DEFEATED?

To the chagrin of 35,000 residents of unincorporated Greenburgh who live outside the refined confines of Edgemont, the incorporation train is leaving the station, loading coal, picking up steam, and chugging down the line (how far can we stretch this metaphor?).  Non-Edgie TOVers are tied to the tracks like Nell Fenwick, holding out hope that  Dudley Do Right will appear at the last second, cut the ropes, and save TOV.  The chances for averting incorporation lie in (1) some miracle legal theory that will taser incorporation (doubtful) or (2) defeat of the forthcoming referendum at the polls. This blog post explores the later of the two as a plausibly viable outcome (straw grasping is a sport).

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING EXERCISE IN CREATIVE ACCOUNTING CONSISTS OF BASELESS NUMBERS MASQUERADING AS STATISTICS.  TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY AT YOUR OWN RISK - ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO CITE MANORWOODS BLOG IN NEWSPAPERS WITHOUT PROVIDING A LINK OR MY NAME] 

Now that the petitions have been successfully file, incorporation is heading to a referendum, most likely early this summer.   The question haunting TOV is guessing how many “no” votes will be needed to kill incorporation, thereby saving the TOV, the town, the Republic and truth and justice. 

The first order of business is to guess how many Edgies will be vote in a short notice referendum.    Our best starting point to guesstimate how many will turn out in favor of incorporation are the incorporation petitions which presented the names of 1,455 registered voters.     

Now come the unfounded assumptions:

Assumption #1:  90% of the 1,455 actually understood what they were signing and support incorporation:   #1 reduces potential "yes" voters to 1,310.

Assumption #2:  The petition signers are motivated and will vote in the referendum in the same ratio as Edgemont registered voters did in the recent presidential election at 80%: #2 reduces the petition voters to 1048.

Assumption #3:   Publicity and debate attracts more attention and adds another 10% to the voter total, resulting in 1,153 votes in favor of incorporation.

So my estimate is 1,153 in favor votes – hold it against me later.  Any Nate Silvers here have a better plan?

Back to our original question:  can incorporation be defeated in a referendum?  If we go with the 1,153 votes in favor prediction, then opponents will need to summon 1,154 voters (remember that it’s an up or down vote).  To reach this total will require a voter turn-out of over 2,300.  The premise of the rest of this essay is that a turnout of over 2,300 make defeat of the incorporation referendum plausible.

Are 1,154 “no” votes possible to attain?  Let’s look at historic turn-out.  In a non-presidential election, the largest Edgemont turnout we’ve seen in recent years came in November 2010 which featured Andrew Cuomo’s first bid for governor and a re-election run for US Senate by Chuck Schumer.  That election brought out 2,449 Edgemont voters, about half of the active registered voter total.  This turnout exceeds our 2,300 threshold and suggests that it is possible for Edgemont voting numbers to reach totals where incorporation could be defeated. Admittedly, however, November turn outs in Edgemont in other off-year elections have usually been closer to 1,400 than 2,300.  

But are November general elections even a good comparison? Probably not because active registered voters are accustomed to turning up election day and easier to mobilize. A better model is a non-November general election or referendum.  For Edgemont, the best examples are probably school budget elections, which can sometimes attract great attention. In the past several years, school budget vote turn out in Edgemont has generally been around 600, peaking at just over 700 back in 2011.  If we go further back, however, we will a budget vote where an astounding 2,316 voters came out on June 16 (!), 2005.  This was a re-vote after a previous negative vote in May (when the vote total was 1077).  Clearly, Edgemont residents were highly motivated and energized for that budget vote. Most significantly for our purposes, the 2005 school budget vote shows that it is possible to mobilize Edgemont voters to turn out in numbers in an off-month referendum whereby defeat of the incorporation referendum is conceivable.

Summary: EIC’s 1,455 ballot signers look like an imposing total should incorporation supporters turn out for the referendum in expected numbers. I estimate that for there to be any chance to defeat incorporation, overall Edgemont turn-out will have to clear 2,300.  To find a non-general election date where numbers turn-out number reach that threshold, we have to go back to the highly charged 2005 second school budget vote.  In conclusion, it is plausible that in a highly charged atmosphere, referendum turn-out numbers could be reached where incorporation could be defeated.  But is this possibility likely or even realistic?  What do you think?