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Does your board tiptoe around the calendar when planning a referendum, trying to choose a favorable date that strengthens chances of its passing? Does your board believe the two tenets of "conventional wisdom" regarding school referenda: that high levels of voter turnout doom referenda to failure and referenda should be timed during elections that have low levels of voter turnout to enhance referenda success? If so, you are not alone.

As a consequence of these beliefs, school boards and administrators have adopted tactics that minimize the number of voters who might turn out. School boards often select election dates considered to be obscure or delay running a referendum until a more auspicious election date, with a lower projected turnout rate, arrives on the horizon. Additionally, board members often pray for copious amounts of rain or, preferably, snow to keep the voters safely at home.

Certainly, if timing of a referendum affects turnout, administrators and boards want to choose the most favorable election date to maximize referenda success. However, because of the enormous effort often devoted to a referendum campaign, referendum planning deserves more attention than decisions based on myth. Little research, however, has shown whether timing for obscure elections pays off in higher referenda passage rates. Recent findings, however, show that there is little difference in the passage rates of referenda occurring during general, primary, or municipal/local elections.

Table 1 reports an analysis of 1,225 Illinois education tax fund elections from 1981-93. It shows what is intuitively obvious to observers of Illinois elections. Turnout for referenda conducted during general elections is much higher -- 51.5 percent, compared to 35.8 percent during primary elections and 34.4 percent during municipal/local elections.

Table 1
Voter Turnout For Tax Referenda
by Election Type, 1981-1993

SOURCE: Illinois State Board of Education End of Year Reports, 1982-1993.

Illinois school administrators and board members may not truly believe the legends relating high voter turnout to referenda defeats. Yet, in the absence of data, they have hedged their bets in the past. Table 2 shows that Illinois school boards have often avoided coinciding referenda with general elections when voter turnout might be unusually high. Table 2 shows that 46 percent of education fund tax referenda occurred during municipal/local elections, compared to 30 percent for primary elections and 24 percent for general elections. But, the question remains unanswered by these data: does timing referenda during general, primary, or municipal elections affect referendum outcomes?

Table 2
Frequency of Education Tax Referenda
by Election Type

SOURCE: Illinois State Board of Education End of Year Reports, 1982-1993.

Table 3, however, shows a different story than that generally believed. While only 39 percent of referenda occurring during general elections passed, that passage rate does not differ substantively from passage rates for primary elections (43 percent) or municipal elections (42 percent). In fact, there is no significant statistical difference in the referenda passage rates between the three elections types. Neither timing of referenda nor the size of the turnout affects referenda outcomes. Statistically, the changes of referenda passage are the same regardless of election type.

Table 3
Education Fund Tax Referenda Outcomes
by Election Type

SOURCE: Illinois State Board of Education End of Year Reports, 1982-1993.

What do these findings mean for school boards and administrators? The electorate during general elections is not substantively different from the electorate in less salient elections; it is simply more likely to vote. Based on these findings, school boards no longer need to fear the high turnout levels of general elections; therefore, they can base referenda timing on financial needs of the district rather than legend. Boards now are free to use all four of the elections in the two-year election cycle rather than limiting referenda to primary or municipal/local elections