For those of you who are aware of our legal battles, this Kind.Fund has been established to cover the FIRST round of funding for our legal council, Green & Gross, P.C. As our funding is depleted, we will post a new Kind.Fund for SECOND round funding.

If you're not familiar with the 7 Districts initiative, please feel free to continue reading ... or go to https://www.facebook.com/TrumbullCitizensfor7Distr...

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THE PROCESS

For those of you who are in to this type of thing, the process for initiatives starts on page 43 of the Town of Trumbull Charter (http://www.trumbull-ct.gov/filestorage/10623/10675...).

For those of you who are NOT into reading the charter, here is a quick outline of how initiatives should go:

1. 10% of currently registered Trumbull voters must sign a petition. (DONE! We actually got more)
2. The signatures must be verified by the town to confirm that those who signed are, indeed, registered voters. (DONE!)
3. Section 6 Paragraph C: "Upon receipt of said petition, the Chairman of the Council shall cause the resolution to be warned for a special meeting or the next regular meeting of the Council."
   (NOT DONE. Chairman Carl Massaro has chosen to reject the resolution based on a legal opinion posted on our Facebook page)
4. When the resolution goes to Town Council, they have three choices 1-pass the resolution immediately, 2-choose to put it to a public vote, 3-put it to a public vote with a competing ballot (NOT DONE - because Carl won't give the TC a chance to vote)
5. The public votes on whether they want 4 or 7 districts (WON'T HAPPEN UNLESS WE LEGALLY INTERVENE ON STEPS 3 & 4 ABOVE)

In order to get on the November ballot (as opposed to the town calling a special election), we must be on the Town Council agenda for 9/7. If this doesn't happen, we can still get a Judge to force the issue onto the ballot.

WHO WE ARE We are a group of private citizens in Trumbull, CT who are interested in restoring 7 voting districts. Most of us are brand-new to Trumbull politics! We are not affiliated with any political party. Members of all parties have been involved in our endeavor – which makes us very proud!

WHY WERE THE NUMBER OF DISTRICTS REDUCED Trumbull had 7 voting districts (and therefore 7 polling places) for almost 30 years before the Town Council voted to reduce it down to 4 districts in 2012. The Town Council’s rationale was that it would save the town $8,000. We have not been presented with any evidence that the town actually realized these savings. It is our belief that the reduction of voting districts was politically motivated due to the Majority Representation rule.

THE MAJORITY REPRESENTATION RULE: In a nutshell, this rule dictates that Town Council representation within a voting district must not be from one party. In Trumbull, The Town Council has 21 members and 4 voting districts. Each voting district elects 5 or 6 people to the Town Council. There must be at least two parties (Rep/Dem/Ind) represented in each voting district.

When Trumbull had 7 voting districts that meant that the minority parties would have (at a minimum) 7 out of 21 seats (or 1/3rd of the seats). Now that Trumbull has 4 voting districts, the minority parties have a minimum of 4 out of 21 seats (1/5th of the seats). The impact? An overpowered party who is able to make run-a-way decisions with no one to stop them.

HOWEVER - THIS IS NOT WHY WE ARE FIGHTING TO GO BACK TO 7 DISTRICTS!

While we think this tactic was for sure slimy, we will leave this fight up to the political parties. We are more concerned about the effect this has had on Trumbull voter turn-out.

HOW DID THE REDUCTION EFFECT TRUMBULL VOTERS? While we believe the reduction in districts was passed to “push out the competition”, that is not our fight.Our concern is that the closure of almost half of our polling places has lead to a reduction in voter turn-out. Here are some quick stats. All of these are directly from the Secretary of State or the Trumbull Registrar of voters.

If you've read this far - THANK YOU for taking an interest in us!

We really appreciate your donation and promise to keep you updated. You can always email us at Trumbull7Districts@gmail.com.