At our April 6 Annual Town Meeting residents will, for the first time, vote using remote, electric “clickers” instead of holding up colorful cards. The clickers were generously purchased by the League of Women Voters.
I’m extremely passionate about Town Meeting. As a candidate for moderator, one of my primary goals, if elected, is to increase annual attendance and participation. Using clickers will help this as they eliminate the need for tedious, lengthy hand counts, thereby making the meetings generally shorter and more efficient. They also make all votes anonymous, which is a benefit to voters.
At their March 19 meeting, I was surprised to hear the Select Board discuss the idea of continuing to make elected officials’ votes public at Town Meeting, even when voting with clickers.
Since I’m running for moderator, I decided to research and understand what other towns do. Is everyone anonymous, or do they treat elected officials differently?
I called 43 towns and spoke to 43 town clerks’ offices. Thirty-four of these towns had open Town Meetings, like Harvard, and used clickers to vote. Out of these 34 towns, 100% of them made the votes anonymous for everyone, even for elected officials.
The reason, these town clerks said, is because we are all equal at Town Meeting. We show up and vote as residents, not as elected officials. Therefore, no one person, or group of people, should have to vote differently or make their votes public over another. It is discriminatory to consider otherwise.
Transparency is important, which is why many town committees and boards, including the Select Board, go on record and publicly vote on each article before Town Meeting.
Using clickers will be a change to Harvard’s Town Meeting tradition. We will need to learn to influence others at the microphone, rather than via raising a card. But I firmly believe this is a positive change for the town and encourage the moderator to ensure equal treatment and anonymous votes for all.
Brad Besse, candidate for moderator
Westcott Road
