I write because I’m tired of the apathy I see when it comes to voting in our community. Despite all the passionate letters written in these pages, many people don’t bother to vote because they feel that their vote is unlikely to make a difference. In the federal level elections I can at least understand that argument – even though philosophically I believe in voting anyway. But at the local level, every vote does indeed matter.

These elections are tightly fought, and decided by relatively few votes. For example, the most recent school board election last year was decided by about 1,000 votes. And this was in the immediate aftermath of October 7, amidst the protests taking place in Teaneck. The year before, the vote was decided by 130 votes! Out of over 30,000 registered voters, the difference was less than half a percent. That difference ultimately meant that Hillary Goldberg was on the council, a staunch supporter of Israel and the Teaneck Jewish population throughout this last year.

In Teaneck, both local elections have members of our community running. (And both have slates of candidates who are unlikely to be sympathetic to Jewish causes.) And if you think it doesn’t matter to you, think again. Do you want the children of this town educated in an environment where it’s ok to “celebrate” the anniversary of October 7 with “World Keffiyeh Day,” advertised with a map of Israel completely replaced by a keffiyeh? Do you want school bussing to continue for private schools? Do you want our town council meetings to continue to be dominated by antisemitic proclamations interfering with the running of town business? Do you think it’s ok that all the Orthodox members were summarily kicked off the planning and zoning boards? I’m not suggesting that we can stop or control all behavior we don’t like, but it’s obviously better that our community have more say in the decision making, rather than counting on others to care about the needs of our community. As has been made painfully clear over the last year, many of the people you thought you could count on were not friends in times of need.

Teaneck of course has a large Jewish population. That means that we have a built in advantage in the local elections. But this only matters if people actually vote! There is a website that makes it easy to look up people’s voting records: https://stevemorse.org/njvoters/njvoters.html . I’ve looked up quite a few of the people I know in town, and I’ve been shocked at how many of them don’t ever vote. (In the districts surrounding where I live, we did reach much higher numbers in the last election. But it was still below 50% of registered voters.) Many of the biggest complainers don’t even bother to vote. To me, it’s mind boggling. But in the current environment, it’s just absolutely inexcusable.

Early voting is currently open at the Rodda Center until Sunday, November 3. Even voting on election day is a quick and easy process. If you can’t be motivated to go vote for its own sake, at least vote to prevent your neighbors (and me!) from knowing it’s your fault if our community’s candidates don’t win.

Danny Farkas

Teaneck