A Dozen Brewster Residents Petition For Electronic Voting

BREWSTER – Resident Ed Wanamaker has filed a citizens’ petition seeking funding for electronic voting. 

 The petition requests $35,000 from free cash reserves to purchase 800 electronic voting devices (also called clickers) for future town meetings. Wanamaker’s petition received 12 signatures, including his own. For citizens’ petitions to be accepted, at least 10 signatures are required for placement on the annual town meeting warrant. At least 100 signatures are required for a special town meeting warrant. 

 At the select board meeting on Monday, Wanamaker presented the petition, along with his reasoning for the request. 

 “I have neighbors and friends who don’t come to town meeting to vote because they don’t want to have their businesses affected by people seeing how they vote,” he said. 

 There are 9,061 registered voters in town, and an average of 400 people have shown up to town meetings recently, he argued. He also said that the accuracy of the electronic technology would outperform hand counting with manual click counters, which is the current method used when a vote count is needed. 

 In addition to the funding, the article also looks to create a new town meeting bylaw which gives the moderator authority over when electronic voting would be needed. 

 Town Manager Peter Lombardi was present when the moderator and Wanamaker crafted the article. He said the number of machines proposed gives the town the capacity to cover larger turnouts, but if they anticipated more in attendance beforehand the town would have the option to rent more clickers at $10 a piece. If a crowd showed up that was not anticipated, the bylaw would allow for the moderator to hold the meeting without the use of electronic voting. 

 Select board member Mary Chaffee was quick to share an opposing view. 

 “The process that we use to spend taxpayer dollars is to solve policy problems,” she said. “And I don’t think we have a documented problem here.”

 Chaffee went on to note that attendance is driven by the topics presented on the warrant, so the idea that electronic voting would draw bigger crowds doesn’t seem plausible. In doing additional research, she found that three communities — Plymouth, Manchester-by-the-Sea and Spencer — all had electronic voting systems fail during town meetings.

“[At the time Chatham’s finance committee was considering electronic voting] over 70 communities in the commonwealth had adopted it, and according to what Mary said, only three towns have had an issue with it,” said Wanamaker.

Chatham adopted electronic voting in 2023. Harwich’s moderator, Michael Ford, supported the use of electronic voting in December 2023, and it will be adopted this year. Orleans has had the system in place for a while now. 

Select board member Ned Chatelain shared Chaffee’s concerns about trust in the system. He said if residents are skeptical now about trusted members of the community counting hands, that won’t be resolved by technology. Chaffee argued that there was a good chance the numbers from the electronic system would be questioned at some point.  

 According to Lombardi and statistics cited by the town clerk, in the past, most town meetings have only had one to two counted votes.

“If there was enough enthusiasm in Brewster to look at this and really consider it, I don’t think doing a one-time vote at town meeting would be the right way to go,” said Chaffee. “We usually study an issue like this. In some communities, moderators put a committee together to do research and analysis, go to other towns, see how the systems work, do a cost comparison because there are multiple systems out there. For all of those reasons, I won’t be supporting this.”

Chaffee, Chatelain and Amanda Bebrin all voted against recommending the article at town meeting. Cindy Bingham and Chair David Whitney voted in favor. Because it was filed by valid petition, the article will appear on the warrant.

A Dozen Brewster Residents Petition For Electronic Voting