Everyone should respond to the Town Meeting Study Committee’s survey, but please be aware that the survey is biased.
Question 10 on electronic voting (“clickers”) doesn’t mention the cons of security issues and expense.
Question 11 on remote Town Meeting doesn’t mention the negative effects of remote participation on community coherence, the loss of social pressure to pay attention, or the increased ease of misinformation and disinformation campaigns.
Question 12 doesn’t mention the harms of separating deliberation from voting — similar to remote participation, but worse.
Also note that Question 9 asks whether various changes would make you more or less likely to attend Town Meeting, but doesn’t ask whether you think these changes would be good or bad for how well our town government works.
Clickers, remote participation, and voting at the polls would all make Town Meeting more convenient, but they are all destructive to democracy. We should find better ways to improve Town Meeting, or we should continue to suffer with our imperfect system that’s “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”
And please remember, everyone, if you really want to affect what Town Meeting votes on, the most powerful way is to attend committee meetings as the committees design articles to put on the warrant. You can attend remotely or in person and speak your mind, or watch a recording and send a letter to the committee — or join the committee yourself!
To access the survey, go to concordma.gov/3639/Town-Meeting-Study-Committee and click on the lozenge-shaped orange button.
Sue Felshin
Sunnyside Lane
The writer is a Planning Board member speaking here on her own behalf.