A Town Meeting tradition ends — not with a bang but a clicker

Abe Fisher says he had a “love-hate” relationship with his job of counting close Town Meeting votes.

Moments after his last meeting as head teller, Fisher questioned the technology that made his post obsolete.

“I’m not very happy about what we’ve done,” he said, referencing the town’s decision to adopt electronic voting clickers in place of its traditional show-of-hands method.

With clickers, Town Moderator Carmin Reiss said, Acton’s legislative body no longer needs tellers. Reiss also retired the ballot counters, whose job it is to tally the rare votes cast by secret ballot. 

Fisher spent 17 years leading volunteer tellers. On June 4, he received a round of applause alongside head ballot counter David Karr, who had held that title since 2013. 

From the floor of Town Meeting this year, Fisher described taking vacation days to attend. He said his wife has worked as a teller “with babies strapped to her back.”

“The number of years I’ve come here on my wedding anniversary cannot be counted,” he told The Acton Bridge. 

As Fisher and Karr move on, they’re reflecting on their ties to — and what’s next for — one of Acton’s oldest democratic traditions.

A family affair

Fisher said he “grew up with the idea that democracy is about process.” His mother chaired the Finance Committee while he was in high school. He started attending Town Meetings before he could vote. 

When his own kids turned 17, Fisher and his wife required them to sit through at least one night of Town Meeting each year.

As Fisher spoke with a Bridge reporter, one of his children, Harry Humphreys, cleaned up the Acton-Carlisle High School gym after serving as a teller.

Humphreys started working Town Meeting with his dad during high school and said history and civic engagement are part of his father’s identity.

“It’s just part of the education he gives you,” he said. 

‘A way to say hello’

As Fisher helmed the team of tellers year after year, prep was time consuming; he spent weeks wrangling volunteers from previous years over email and via Google Forms. 

While the ballot counters were only called on once during his tenure, Karr said recruiting people to be ready for a count was a way to foster connections, “a way to say ‘hello’ to a bunch of people I don’t know at the beginning of Town Meeting.”

Karr’s only secret ballot count happened in 2013, when voters weighed in on an article regarding school administration. He said the “laborious process” took roughly 40 minutes as volunteers tallied ballots in a separate room. 

Future use

Karr and Town Meeting Study Committee Chair Eric Moore said Reiss’ clicker announcement and the Wednesday night recognition were surprises. 

Officials first discussed renting clickers for a trial period. 

While their use was provisional, and questions about whether to rent or buy devices were once up in the air, Reiss said, those matters now seem settled. (She said the town could revisit the matter in the future.)

Voters deliberated about clickers for nearly an hour at the beginning of Town Meeting, and Reiss said their choice to use clickers on all article votes “was definitive.”

In an email to The Bridge, Reiss said the town has budgeted funds to buy clickers. “The decisions, for the time being,” she said, “appear to have been made.” 

Karr doesn’t dispute the result. But he questions how clicker use went from a trial to settled fact. “I don’t know who is making what decisions when,” he said.  

‘A loss of identity’

As they considered implementing electronic voting, Moore said he doesn’t think his panel thought about “what would happen with the tellers.” 

“I felt for Abe,” he said, recalling Fisher’s Town Meeting remarks. “This was a loss of identity.” 

Beyond clickers, Fisher also opposed a vote to pursue remote participation in Town Meeting. 

Karr said the 2013 count had two spoiled ballots. He anticipated some people will have trouble with clickers but said, “We do the best we can with what we have.”

With clickers here to stay, Karr said he hopes Town Meeting can address the lost forms of civic engagement that volunteer ballot counting or teller service offered. “I hope we find ways to keep people engaged,” he said.