Push for remote votes: Town Meeting revamp awaits Beacon Hill nod
Remote participation could let people vote from their couch and hopefully draw more residents into the process.
A few hundred Concordians made the trip to Acton-Carlisle High School to vote at Town Meeting late last month. Others waited for results at home, and still more had other things to do.
The town is seeking state approval to add remote participation options that could let people vote from their couch in future sessions and hopefully draw more residents into the process.
Beacon Hill has yet to act, but Acton’s delegation is on board.
State Rep. Simon Cataldo, retiring state Rep. Carmine Gentile, and state Sen. Michael Barrett are backing Acton’s petition. Gentile has filed a separate measure to allow remote participation statewide.
Cataldo told The Acton Bridge that “the Town Meeting voters have spoken” with their formal request for hybrid sessions.
“The legislature is traditionally cautious about voting reforms,” he said. Remote participation has its risks, but “the risks are justifiable.”
Ravi Simon, an ex-staffer running unopposed to succeed Gentile, took to social media after Sudbury’s Town Meeting this month and said, “It never ceases to amaze me that such a small group of people end up making decisions on items of consequence.”
Town Meeting is a “beautiful, if anachronistic, New England tradition,” he said, but it needs reforms, “including state authorization for remote participation.”
New Acton Town Moderator Karlen Reed said she’s interested in the technology required to ensure remote vote integrity. She told The Bridge this spring that she assumes the legislature will eventually approve a remote option.
“When it does,” she said, “we’ll start experimenting with it.”
