To the editor:

As election week approaches, I would like to express how disturbed I am by the decision of the Chassell Township Board to once again place the library proposal on the November ballot. I was part of the effort made by Friends of the Library during the summer to encourage voters to choose “No” to keep library funding in place.

Aug. 2 came, and Chassell residents voted. My understanding of an election is that the ballots are cast and the results are final, unless there is some misdoing involved in the voting process. I have heard of no such issue with the August election, and yet the proposal will again be placed before voters on Nov 8.

So the proposal was defeated fair and square, and yet we’ll be voting on it again in a few days? The rationale I’ve heard is that there weren’t enough people at the polls to get an accurate reflection of the community’s wishes. Strange indeed, since my information is that voter turnout was more than three times the normal for an August primary election.

The Portage Lake District Library is the only library of its caliber in the area. School libraries open to the public cannot offer anywhere near the services of the PLDL. Living in such a rural area means many amenities are inaccessible to us locally; it will be a true shame if a full-service library becomes one of them.

But for me, beyond the result of the library proposal, the outstanding issue now is this: what guarantees Chassell taxpayers that their choices at the polls will be honored? It makes me very uneasy to know that the result of a valid election can be discarded by a small group who are apparently comfortable ignoring the voice of the people by whom they were elected.

I have only lived in Chassell for three years, and I don’t know any of the members of the Chassell Township Board. However, I have a huge issue with my vote as a taxpaying citizen being negated on any basis. It is not the place of elected officials to ignore the results of an election and replace a proposal on the ballot simply because they didn’t like the answer the voters gave. Someone told me “They can do it, apparently it’s legal.” Many things are legal, but “legal” and “right” are often far from being the same.

Sarah Jackson

Chassell