Let’s Undo The Do-Over Vote, With A Re-Do Do-Over Vote

City officials in Naperville enjoy poking and prodding Naperville residents. For them, it appears to be a sport, where they can make the rules, officiate the game, delay the game, then change the rules, keep score, and then change the score. In order to do that, Naperville city officials (the city council and city manager) need a large group of cronies whom are indebted to city officials, and city officials whom are indebted to the cronies. In the banking world it would be like a banker loaning money to a friend, and the friend then gives half money to the banker, and the banker then forgives the loan. If Wichita State could control the NCAA, like Naperville city officials control Naperville residents, the Shockers would be the NCAA champions.

Naperville city officials enjoy playing the game when they can keep score, and if the score should somehow go terribly wrong for the city, they can then finagle a do over game where the score doesn’t count. Pretty cool, isn’t it, especially if you’re a Naperville city official.

It happened just a few years ago when the residents of Naperville wanted to have a non-binding referendum on the ballot, so residents could vote on whether or not they wanted intrusive Smart Meters installed on their homes and businesses. 4,199 residents signed a petition to get the referendum on the ballot which Naperville officials did not want. As luck would have it for Naperville officials, one person miraculously popped up and filed an objection to the petition to not allow the question on the ballot. Naperville officials sided with the one objector, over the wishes of 4,199 residents and would not allow it to be voted upon. One person trumped 4,199 people.

It happened again Tuesday when residents were asked once more to vote on the same issue they voted upon in 2010. The issue was whether residents wanted district representation, or wanted a free-for-all at-large type of representation. 42,829 residents voted in 2010 and the first result was a landslide victory for district representation by a vote of 28,236 to 14,593. It wasn’t even close. A huge resident ‘shout-out’ for politician accountability.

Members of the city council inwardly became hysterical; accountability meant they would be easily defeated in future elections. They managed to delay the implementation of the vote for five full years, that’s 1,825 days, or 43,800 hours, or almost 3 million seconds. As luck would have it again for Naperville officials, somewhere around day number 1,100 of the five-year delay another person miraculously pops up and wants to have a do-over vote in 2013 for the same issue that was voted upon in 2010. Naperville officials jump for joy and think this is an absolutely fantastic idea; in fact it’s such a great idea that they couldn’t have done better if they would have thought of it themselves, which most likely they did. Naperville politicians approve the do-over vote in 2013 to undo the original vote in 2010.

This time instead of almost 43,000 residents voting, only 14,613 vote, and only 9,772 vote in favor of ‘at-large’ representation. So with the help of Naperville city officials, and some tricky, ambiguous wording on the 2013 ballot 9,772 people overturned the wishes of 28,236 residents in the first vote.

In short, in Naperville, 1 person can undo what 4000+ people wanted, and 10,000 people can out-vote nearly 30,000 people in a do-over vote. Confusing isn’t it. Try to logically explain that to somebody other than Naperville politicians.

So I say the fair way to resolve this is add the results of both elections together, and it’s still a landslide of 33,077 to 24,365 in favor of district representation (making politicians accountable)

Knowing that Naperville officials hyper-ventilate at the thought of that idea, how about going to Plan B. Let’s have a Re-do, do-over vote, to undo the do-over vote of the original vote. Sort of like two out of three. Maybe miraculously somebody else could pop up and the residents of Naperville could win one with a last second full-court shot. There still are a lot of those original 3 million seconds remaining.