Open vs. Representative Town Meetings
A representative town meeting is a municipal legislature where members are elected by the townspeople to represent the citizens and vote on issues for them.
Representative town meetings differ from open town meetings in a few ways. In an open town meeting, any registered voter may attend and vote on his or her own opinions. For a representative town meeting, citizens elect a number of individuals to represent them. Typically, these elections occur in a local precinct. These chosen representatives attend town meetings to vote on issues on behalf of the townspeople.
Advantages of Electronic Voting
In representative town meetings when using an electronic voting system, votes are immediately tabulated and displayed so that they are visible to town meeting members and citizens of the public present at the meeting.
Unlike an open town meeting where the voter’s identity is not linked to their vote, participants in a representative town meeting have their name and precinct associated with their vote. After the meeting has adjourned, the Town Clerk publishes a list showing all town meeting members and the tally of all votes. This information is typically available in the Town Clerk’s office and on the town’s website. The public can then look back to see the records of each representative, which can be used to hold the representatives accountable.
A great advantage of using electronic voting over traditional methods is the availability of information in an accurate and timely manner. Traditional voting procedures require extensive time to the tally and record votes. This not only increases the chance for error, but also reduces the amount of time available to be spent on the actual meeting debate topic. After the meeting is over, electronic voting systems allow for an instant report of results that can be easily viewed and published immediately.
Each keypad is scanned to the appropriate representative as he or she checks in to the town meeting. This ensures that only allowed members may vote during in the meeting, and that all keypads are returned at the end of the day. At representative town meetings, the keypads are also associated with the member’s identity to be able to match each person’s name with his or her vote. When the meeting ends, the keypads are returned to bins located near every exit.
To sum it up, there are 3 main advantages of using electronic voting in representative town meetings.
- Transparency to the Public: Electronic voting links each member’s identity to a keypad in which their votes will be instantaneously recorded. This allows for easy access to these records by the public. Citizens can then use this information to decide on who they’d like to elect to represent their opinions at future town meetings.
- More Time for Important Matters: Traditional voting methods entail a great amount of time spent on tabulating votes. With the use of electronic voting keypads, moderators can save time by eliminating tedious counting procedures. The member’s vote is simply recorded electronically where it can be displayed immediately when the voting window closes.
- Security: All votes are transmitted seamlessly over encrypted radio links.
