A vote-tallying clicker made by Meridia.
The town is moving toward buying electronic handheld “clickers” to record resident votes in real time and speed up the tallying process at Town Meetings — but they won’t be available for the Annual Town Meeting (ATM) in March.
The drive for clickers went into high gear after the December 2, 2023 Special Town Meeting, which featured two multiple-choice votes whose results required hours to tally. The slow process highlighted a problem with Town Meetings in general: they’re too long, and many residents aren’t able to sit through a meeting of several hours to vote on the one or two articles that interest them.
Citing state law that requires Town Meetings to be held in person (both discussion and voting), Town counsel has given its “unequivocal opinion” that any sort of direct remote participation is not allowed, Town Administrator Tim Higgins said at the January 8 Select Board meeting, noting that the requirement was not altered even at the height of the Covid pandemic. Meetings can be streamed, meaning people can follow the proceedings online, but they may not speak or vote unless they attend in person.
One idea that was alluded to at the meeting but not discussed in detail was having people watch the meeting from home and then go to the school auditorium to vote when they saw that the item of interest was coming up shortly. Town Meetings now require voters to check in at the start of the meeting.
Another idea: splitting Town Meeting into two sessions, one for discussion of the issues and one solely for voting. But this would seem to clash with the requirement that questions and discussion be allowed on each motion once it’s on the floor. This would be a problem for voters who weren’t able to attend the first session. The town plans to seek a legal opinion about whether splitting up a Town Meeting in this way is allowed.
Same format but with clickers?
“I’m not going to pretend it went smoothly [in December] and we shouldn’t be moving toward clickers,” Select Board member Kim Bodnar said. The technology would save the time needed to count standing votes on issues where there isn’t a clear majority after the voice vote.
At the upcoming ATM, the Town Clerk’s office is requesting about $30,000 in the fiscal 2025 budget to buy clickers — though even if approved, those funds would not be available until July 2024.
Another hitch: any expenditure over $10,00 must be put out to bid, further constraining the timeline. “You can’t just go out and purchase them off the shelf,” Higgins said. Even if the money were raised privately, “you have to have confirmation that the funds are in hand before going out to bid… Under any circumstances, it would be rushed to have it for March, but we especially want to be careful” this spring, because of the crucial issues to be voted on: Housing Choice Act rezoning, and a community center.
However, Sara Mattes argued at the Select Board meeting that this was the very reason that clickers are needed in March, because quick and accurate voting results are vital when the issues are so important to the town’s future.
“It is not rocket science,” she said, noting that town officials have reports from other towns that have successfully implemented a clicker system. She also suggested gathering donations to rent clickers. “Let’s call it a pilot project that is privately funded for this upcoming Town Meeting… It would certainly go a long way toward restoring some faith in decision-making and [alleviate] the frustration we had at the last Town Meeting.”
The Selects were not receptive, however. For one thing, there’s a learning curve for employing clickers on the part of officials and residents at the meeting. Bodnar suggested trying them out at an unofficial State of the Town vote, or on an ATM warrant article that is less critical and controversial.
Another issue is the question of anonymity. When a clicker is given to a resident at a Town Meeting, “does it become public record what vote they cast? Those are the kind of things we have to carefully think through,” Higgins said.
Fortunately, there will not be any complicated multi-part votes in March. If a voice vote on a given issue is inconclusive, “there will be a standing vote, it will be secured, it will be formal. It’s an up or down vote,” he said.
“On a municipal scale, we’re moving at lightning speed with this one,” Select Board member Jim Hutchinson said.
But Mattes was not mollified. “You’re not going to have [clickers] in place for a generational vote. I find it, with all due respect, unconscionable,” she said.