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To the editor:
Trustee Electoral Boards have appointed County School Board members in Virginia since 1877 and after 103 years of experience with the system, 63 of Virginia’s counties still prefer it to appointment by the Supervisors. Only 32 counties, or half that number, have changed over to appointment by the Supervisors (according to the records of the Virginia School Boards Association).
Those who want to change over to appointment by the Supervisors say that this system is more “democratic”. So they get the Judge to set the special Referendum on June 17, when they know that a great number of qualified voters will be busy in their hay fields and otherwise occupied. The law says that the purpose of the Referendum is to “take the sense of the qualified voters on the question”. 2040 people in Rappahannock are said to have voted in the last Presidential Election; we will be lucky if half that number turn out for the Referendum. In that event, we will be “taking the non-sense of the qualified voters”. If the petitioners had asked the Judge to set the Referendum for the next general election, in November, we would really know what the majority of the qualified voters wanted.
We would also be saving the $7-9,000 (say, $7 to $9 per vote) we must now take out of the county’s surplus to stage the Referendum on June 17 because, after 103 years of using the Trustee Electoral Board system, the petitioners could not wait four more months to include the Referendum on the ballot in November.
ROBERT W. EASTHAM Flint Hill
(Editor’s note: Mr. Eastham’s figures on the cost of the referendum are grossly in error.
According to information from clerk Diane Bruce, verified by election board chairman J. G. Carney, the
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