the following podcast is produced or sponsored by a community member the content views and opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of b s e or the town of dhamma at b a m c welcomes your comments  had its annual town meeting in the last two weeks it took three different nights to deliberate the articles that were presented to our communities legislature and despite all of the substantive discussion that occurred the conversation that occurred was occurring after town meeting was not about what was voted on but how the votes were taken and how the votes were record d there was a call on an ongoing basis for recording votes so that people votes could be access after town meeting  adjourned and there were there was support for that and there was a junction to that so we're going to talk about that today and i have with me today mary bradley who is a town meeting member who is one of the i think that you don't have to be a policy geek to have an interest in electronic roll call vote amy you know st blush it seems like who outside of those who are involved with the intricacies of town meeting would ever care about this can you explain why you please believe that people should care i'm people in the public yeah so we are elected to be on town meeting and maybe in town meeting men town meeting members are elected to be on town meeting and where our elected by our neighbors and they have sixty words to determine whether or not to elect seventy words now from the league of women voters pamphlet that comes out before the election and they don't know anything else about us unless they meet us on the street and talk to us and although i do talk to a lot of my neighbors they don't know how i vote or i could tell them my vote one way and vote and actually vote another way of course most people don't do that but they have no way of knowing that we can see how our senators vote we can see how our other representatives vote but tell me the members votes are all aggregate aggregated we vote with an electronic device that captures all the votes but instead of having each individual vote shown all the votes are aggregated and and there's no insight into him so the reason we use these devices the electronic roll call device is to have efficient voting to have accurate voting and to be accountable to our constituents that's why we adopted that the device in town meeting ok let's paint the picture so people who perhaps are not familiar with can meeting have a notion in works out to be two hundred dollars let's say two hundred and eighty dollars rounded off to two hundred and eighty dollars individuals who gather in generally the high school auditorium to debate and vote upon legislation that's presented to it right so it's a large and unwieldy can i say that and a large an unwieldy group of people it is and so in order to try to make this more efficient all tell me eight members are now assigned a little clicker right and when a vote is in electronic vote is presented you click one for  and two for now that's right and what you were saying was that traditionally at the end of voting the vote may be one hundred and forty yeses and in one hundred and ten knows changed that when there's a vote to one hundred and forty to one hundred and ten that the who be recorded the people who comprise the one hundred and forty b recorded in the people town meeting right don't haven't traditionally done a recorded fact we have done to a previously i think two possibly three in a town meeting and there is a process by which we can do an electronic roll call vote ok it's a very unwieldy it's a time consuming process so it's not efficient  in june i put forward a citizen's petition to address this issue and try to make electronic roll call voting the default for all or final articles and what happened well i wrote it with with another town meeting member about two hours before it was due and it did not meet the four squares that are so i had to withdraw it and when i did withdraw it i i got up in front of town meeting and i said these are the reasons i gave my reasons for wanting to have electronic roll call vote take place at town meeting to make it more efficient ensure accuracy and ensure accountability and to bypass the current method that we need to go through in order to have an electronic roll call vote and i i gave the charge to town meeting and i said i would like you to demonstrate that we want this and then so when we bring it back next time there won't be a lot of arguments about it'll just flow through easily and the reason there was some pushback from the town moderator did not indorse it he didn't think town meeting was ready for it yet and the town clerk was not sure that town meeting was ready for it and a few other people said that they were not convinced that our town meeting should have electronic roll call vote so i felt like we should demonstrate but i didn't want to be the person leading the charge because then it became my issue and not town meetings issue and i really but in the fall no one called for an electronic roll call vote and i think there are four reasons for that i think there i didn't lay out a road map i just said you guys take this and do it and i think that i should've said can you call for a roll call vote i could should have asked a number of people to do it but i didn't do that also the votes were all two hundred to eight you know they they were they were so i didn't i didn't your mark anyone i didn't give a role i didn't give a roadmap and the votes were really extreme and i felt because they were extreme to call for an electronic roll call vote that would be you know calling out those people so last friday before this most recent town meeting i went into the town clerk's office just to say hello and r and some and ellen said why didn't you bring up electronic roll call vote in the fall are you going to do that in this town meeting i said no i had no plans to i felt like this was something that town meeting members should take up on their own and i should come up from yes from the group rather than down from an individual exactly exactly and she said and i gave my my reasons why i thought town meeting didn't do it last time and i also handedly said which i sometimes do i said and we all know who those eight people are you know and i got a lot of blowback from that yeah yeah so they in that i'm not going to say who but someone said that was bullying to say that i knew who those eight out i was being very flippant about it and you know it wasn't as though i hold those people in disregard whoever they are i don't really know who they are you know i might have ideas of how people vote but i have no idea how they really vote and so in the message i got was regardless of review meeting with precinct five and six and i brought this up i said hey are people interested in calling for an electronic roll call vote and so we identified three different articles that we were going to call for an electronic roll call vote for i wrote mike widmer the moderator and i wrote ellen cushman o'brien so they would both be aware that we were going to call for these so ellen could be prepared with the technology and mike would know to look for us in you know make sure that we were able to call for it and because you need to be quick and call for your respective of what the vote was absolutely this wasn't dependent on whether it was one hundred and forty two thousand two hundred and forty or two hundred and eighty right ok right and i'll give you a we all had we were texting in case something happened to one of us and we couldn't call you know we had to leave so we were staying in contact and  article ten came up someone texted an article to him and he related to the term of office of the moderator that's right it was a proposal to make the moderators term a three year term rather than the one year term yes ok yes so so that article came up and someone said i'm going to call for an electronic roll call vote and i said don't do it you know but of course i can't control people and but none of us called for it it was town meeting they call it you know two people call for it from the floor after the vote so it was starting to work you know people were seen this is a tool we want and there were other and let's go back for a minute on why you wanted to do it a number of times because my impression is that one of the things that you want and let me not put words in your mouth so if i'm wrong  sure my impression was that you simply wanted to show people that it works and it works effectively the the current process is it can meeting votes then somebody has to call that in your opinion this is where i don't want to put words in your mouth in your opinion you think that that silly actually if we just said we're going to take roll call votes on all final action right it would work effectively efficiently and people right would get used to it right absolutely that's that that's exactly my point is that it takes too long and coming to really to vote on whether take a roll call vote c s sort of extraneous right it does but it was interesting the st time when i called it for electronic roll call vote eighty people supported that so it passed not you know that was more than thirty five that when julie crockett called for it for article six i think there were one hundred and sixteen people who supported it so ok so let's go through some of the argument mentioned one which is just transparency we know how our congressional representatives you know how right state representatives vote right the town meeting is the local legislative body just like the state legislature is at the state and congress is at the federal yeah and everybody should know how everybody votes exactly well it seems to me too that there are times that people decline to vote there are two hundred and eighty give or take ten media members and we get votes with totals of two hundred and thirty which means that people are either missing or choosing not to vote and there's a certain transparency or accountability on whether somebody is there or whether somebody is not voting whether whether it be that they're not it can meeting or whether they're there and not voting right voters should should know that right is that part of you absolutely mean that's part of the transparency right it seems yeah so does it make a difference to you there really shouldn't be it it shouldn't matter and i think i think if i know that when i'm in the minority i want people to know how i vote you know if i lose if something passes town meeting that i don't agree with i want people to know that so if i'm one of eight or i'm one of a one hundred and forty it doesn't it shouldn't matter and i suppose in thinking about this if all final action is taken by  know overwhelmingly defeated or right or supported right so let's let's talk about some of the arguments against it there was a strong feeling among some and our town moderator gave an eloquent speech about the need to avoid abusing the minority and the need to what how do you well i do you respond to them well i think a byproduct my hope is a byproduct of electronic roll call voting will extinguished that that already takes place that you know people are people there are less people know how people think they know how people vote and i don't think they're always right and i think that it will be good for our community if we can see that we don't we're not all in lockstep on everything that the person that you think you're aligned with on every single issue you may not agree with you know and i think that that will in the long run make us a much healthier community right now i see a lot of this there is a lot of clustering and i think transparency it's a little bit of sunshine on that and it will all a road that actually let's talk about that for a minute because that's something i never ever thought of to be honest that if you identify  folks that are voting one way or another those people may not be who you are as you assume they are if i k and so the conversation  might actually expand it may not be accusatory it may not be right the weaponization right but to really make explicit yeah that there are different opinions right right that that that may actually be helpful yeah i think so and in and i think we really limit ourselves when we think that we can't talk to people because they're on they have different points of view julie crockett and i wrote the citizens petition together we could not be more different politically on a national level you know we do a lot of things together we don't agree on a lot of national level politics so let me ask you speaking in national politics i mean i thought the other night that much of the concern or maybe not strike the word much some of the concerns actually is reflective of what's occurring and the federal level that in its own way and i'm no trump fan so i'll say that upfront but that people's concerns about the the lack of civility or the  discourse will reach into belmont yeah is that is that driving some of the concern about i think that that has happened in belmont i think we've seen that in belmont we've seen that in our most recent election we saw that the select board position there was harassment of two of the candidates that i know of you know and and excuse me and i you know it's so so i think the more sunshine we put on this the less so the argument the argument  of civility right absolutely and i and i have also seen people you know i have i sued bass wrote a letter just the other day to the moderator seen on the way out of town meeting she and a friend were talking about how they voted differently you know and were having fun with that and i think that that's the attitude that we should be taking to town meeting is that we don't he's agree but we're going to walk out together having fun you know and getting along you're not always going to win on an article but you know that's what's going to happen i think downtown is lovely i voted against the beautification you know  die enjoy that then it looks so nice down there you know and so i think we need to to own our behavior and i think we all make mistakes and we all get very passionate  and so we need a level of forgiveness still with that now as a proponent of speaking of excuse me how it gets used as a proponent of  simply it should be on record in then people can use it or not use it as they see fit you mean if people abuse other people because of how they vote or if they start let's say and i'm going to make this up but let's say that there is an environmental action advocacy group in belmont and there has been i don't want to use them let's say there's a hypothetical and they publish a a list of people that consistently vote against environmental issues is that a good thing or a bad thing ha that's a good question i think that's that's that's a bad thing because people do change their mind i i think yeah i think that's a bad thing especially if we have a record ok where individuals can go on the town website and they can look up how candidates vote so if the league of women voters in its voter guide each election published a list of the roll call votes and how people voted one way or another without comment that would be one thing that would be an acceptable but if a citizen's or  fiscal prudence in belmont published a list of twenty people saying these people are out there wasting your tax dollars because they voted this way on right certain issues that is not what your intent but there is a way for you to control well there's no way for me to control that and that is a freedom of speech kind of thing i heard that reflects on the group that's that's publishing that as well so that's a risky thing for that group to do if you're going to put something castigating members of the community you could lose more than you gain by doing that oh that's an interesting response to that as a community is not to stop the publication ban it is to have the community right step up and say this is not belmont yet this is unacceptable behavior and belmont and if you are to it odds with the community norms or the community wars then you start losing support you yeah yeah it wouldn't be a definitive action but it would be a consequence sure yeah yeah so are there articles that you said that there should be a roll call vote on every final action yeah everyone because there are some articles that passed unanimously t role electronic roll call voting will look like i think that that's a good point that there are housekeeping measures as long as there is a mechanism by which an individual could call for an electronic roll call vote you know maybe there are some that we just are yeah ok i have one final question we're actually running a little short on time here but tom this is not a theoretical question but a principle question and that is seems to me that whether your vote is recorded and made public or not goes to the question of whether in elected town meeting member is in town meeting to represent the interests of their constituents or to represent their own political beliefs right do you understand yeah yeah i've had this conversation with a couple of people and i've had people say to me that they are representing their constituents and i feel like i am voting my conscience and my constituents can look at how i vote and see whether or not how i vote resonates with their beliefs i feel like the constituents have so such a variety of opinions that you can't possibly represent all of them you have you know they contradict and given what you just said in order for that to work you know people have to know how you vote absolutely ok i understand that is there a way forward for for you for me well i was really disheartened by i was in a town meeting on monday i was out of town but on wednesday night i was really disheartened with how that went and and so special town meeting this fall we've been speaking with mary bradley today she is a town meeting member and is one of the leaders if not the leader of a movement  have all final action on articles at our local town legislature town meeting recorded as a roll call vote and we'll see where this goes in the community so thanks for stopping over mary thank you for having me roger thank you to the listeners for it listening into community conversations today you can find community conversations been community conversations i'm your host roger colton i will talk to you again next week