From South Washington County Citizens for Progress:
THANK YOU for your support and donations! Because of the outpouring of community support, we were able to reach our first fundraising goal of $5000+ for the Court Bond Fund by Monday (11/30) afternoon! That was $5000+ raised in about three days - this is an amazing feat and couldn’t have been done without all the hard work of all of our supporters! Well Done!
Today [12-2] the Notice of Contest and Election Contest Under Minnesota Statute § 209.021 documents have been filed at the Washington County District Court as well as served to South Washington County School District 833 School District Clerk, Dayna Bentdahl, the School Board Clerk, Katie Schwartz and the Washington County Auditor, Kevin Corbid. This marks the beginning of the community contesting the Canvassing Board’s decision to pass Ballot Question 2 thereby disenfranchising five voters when the Board failed to recognize the five challenged ballots as “No” votes. By contesting the election, we are not asking a judge to overturn an election result; we are requesting that the judge enforce the election result by recognizing that the voters’ intent on the five ballots was to vote “No” and that the Canvassing Board erroneously threw those ballots out. The result of the court recognizing the five ballots as "No" votes will be the election ending in a TIE, which would DEFEAT the $96 Million (before interest!) bond!
That means that together with you and others in the community, we will have been able to defeat BOTH bond Questions 2 & 3, resulting in saving District 833 residents and taxpayers $146.5 Million (with interest, totaling $258.4 Million) in additional debt and property tax increases. That is HUGE!
Even though the complaint has been filed and served on the respective parties, our work is not done. There is still much more to do, so we still need your help and support to see this issue through to the end. That means that the $5000 Court Bond fund was just the beginning: in order to continue this fight, we will need to continue raising funds to pay for the work that has to be done, and we cannot do it without your help and support.
So…our next stage of fundraising begins NOW. We need to raise $9000 over the next two weeks in order to cover the additional legal fees that a case of this magnitude requires. Think that can’t be done? Think again: it was with YOUR help that $5000 was raised in THREE DAYS! Imagine what together we can do in two weeks!
Like the lesson learned from this election - EVERY VOTE COUNTS - we also know that every donation counts toward the pursuit of justice by rectifying the voter disenfranchisement caused by the Canvassing Board’s decision to not count the five contested ballots as “No” votes. Please join us by donating TODAY. Please also SHARE this information with friends, neighbors and local businesses so they can also have the opportunity to join all of us in supporting this important issue.
We will continue to use the SWC4P PayPal donation site to take donations as well as accepting checks/cash payable to SWC4P. We will also set up a crowd-funding site to make it easier to donate to this cause, as well as organizing opportunities to call on local businesses (as a team in person and/or by phone) to encourage their participation with our fundraising efforts (dates tbd).
Won’t you please donate today so we can continue the fight?
Thank you again for your support! We CANNOT do this WITHOUT YOU!
Sincerely,
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle – SWC4P Chair
Susan Richardson – SWC4P Treasurer
PO Box 251482
Woodbury, MN 55125
