Town Meeting in any New England town ought to be a simple thing. A motion is brought to a vote and people hold colored cards in the air to indicate whether or not they support the motion. If the color associated with the Ayes dominates the color associated with the Nays, they Ayes have it. That’s pretty straightforward. Shouldn’t take a lot of time.
Town of Uxbridge, MA replaced its tradition of colored cards with an electronic voting system that enabled residents to vote immediately and anonymously.
Since the earliest days, the annual Town Meeting in Uxbridge, Massachusetts has been rife with passion when questions are put on the table relating to the public funding of schools. In 1732, the town had to hold two votes before it could set aside the funds for a school.
Church membership is in decline, and the parish church is feeling it most acutely. Strengthening the community may involve changing the community, and that’s rarely easy.
Like many religious institutions in the United States, the Catholic Church has struggled over the last decades. Fewer families are joining established churches and parishes are shrinking. What changes needed to be made to ensure the vitality of the Pittsburgh Diocese?
Maine has implemented ranked choice voting for both its federal and state elections. Localities in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and half a dozen other states have adopted it for municipal elections. But what is ranked choice voting?
One question that frequently challenges the cooperative principles that should be guiding a housing cooperative is the question of cumulative voting vs. straight voting. Both cumulative voting and straight voting are accepted ways to conduct the nomination and election of board members, but the different outcomes they produce could result in different people becoming involved in the management of a cooperative.
How can an online voting system or electronic voting system help a housing cooperative? Every co-op board runs into voting situations that are nuanced and that’s where the electronic voting provides anonymity, transparency, speed and permanent record needed to make the right decisions.
Reticence. It’s a fancy word that means a “reluctance to speak about something” and reticence is often the last thing that a board wants to encounter when asking voters to speak their minds.
“Laws are like sausages,” is it said. “Best not to see them being made.”
While that may be true for most people, if you’re a member of a conference committee or a subcommittee charged with creating laws, you need to pay close attention to how those laws are made.
