In 14 States, Voters Display Very Different Attitudes Toward School Bonds and Taxes

USA - English

• USA - English

MADISON, Wis., Sept. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Between January 1-June 30, 2010, voters in 14 states weighed in on 728 local school bond and tax measures on 17 different election dates.

The study found that the overall approval rate for local school bond and tax votes in 14 selected states was 71.3%. The average approval rating for school bond elections was lower, at 60.4% in the 11 states with school bond votes. The average approval rating for school tax votes was 76.2%.

The overall approval percentages disguise the fact that some states had quite low approval percentages while others had extremely high approvals.

Voters in Illinois, New Jersey and Ohio all approved fewer than 50% of bond votes, while voters in California, Missouri and New Mexico approved more than 70% of school bond votes.

The same disparity is seen in analyzing votes on school tax issues. Voters in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey and Wisconsin had approval ratings of less than 50%, while voters in Florida, Iowa, Michigan and Washington approved tax measures at rates higher than 80%.

According to Johanna Herman, a lead researcher for the study, the 14 states included in the study were chosen because of the relative ease of access in these states to information about school bond and tax elections, compared to the states not included in the study. She noted that school bond and tax election information is hard to come by in many states.  In more than thirty states, there is no centralized database, public or private, that archives information about that state's local school bond and tax votes.

In addition to studying approval rates of local school finance elections, Ballotpedia has created a library of articles that lay out the laws governing these votes in each state, as well as charts that allow readers to see how the laws in their state compare to laws in other states about local school finance votes.

Ballotpedia.org is an edited wiki-based website about state and local politics, especially state and local ballot measures, recall elections, and state legislatures.

Sponsored by the non-profit, non-partisan Lucy Burns Institute (LBI) based in Madison, Wisconsin, Ballotpedia has 107,542 articles, 2,446 registered users, and an editorial staff of LBI employees.  

SOURCE Ballotpedia