ARPA funding OK’d for electronic voting
BELCHERTOWN – For the first time, the town will use an electronic voting system through clickers at the town meeting in May.
The SelectBoard approved a $10,000 allocation from American Rescue Plan Act funding, including purchasing 300 counters and the first meeting conducted with the company, Meridia Interactive Solutions, to train and help troubleshoot.
Town Clerk Terry Camerlin gave a presentation on clicker voting at last week’s joint Finance Committee and Selectboard meeting.
At the meeting, Camerlin said she’s been researching clicker voting for the last five years, and surrounding communities like Ware and South Hadley have used clicker voting for years.
“Clicker voting is when you go to town meeting, everyone who checks in on the poll pad is issued a clicker, with ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘abstain’ buttons,” she said. “The back of the clickers would have numbers so when someone would check in at the poll pad, you would have a clicker and its number would be assigned to you so we can get the clickers back.”
The benefits of clicker voting would be transitioning away different from voice votes, where the vote with the loudest voices wins, but not necessarily the most people.
The other form of voting used color-coded cards, but Camerlin said that solution wasn’t working well either.
“I’m hearing from residents that they’re not fond of that (form of voting) because they don’t want their neighbors to know their vote if it’s a contentious thing,” she said. “But with clicker voting, it’s anonymous.”
She said the clickers and system not only tally the votes and totals but also operate independently from the internet, so they can’t be hacked.
She said if there is a contentious item on the warrant, they can also rent more counters should the need arise.
Finance Committee member Jonathan Ritter said his only concern would be collecting the clickers at the end of the evening.
“The next day, you’d get a report that would show any clicker that was not turned back in,” Camerlin said. “And what (Ware and South Hadley) do is they turn over that list to the police department.”
Belchertown could also borrow clickers from surrounding communities using the same clicker system.
During the SelectBoard meeting, SelectBoard member Ed Boscher asked Camerlin to explain the security of the voting system.
“Once everyone votes and the moderator closes voting, the results would appear. The other way…when you go to play bingo, all the numbers are displayed, so all the numbers would be displayed when you cast your vote the color of your clicker would change to show it was recorded,” she said.
He asked if there was a record of the voting. Camerlin said yes, it would be saved into the program they use. Members expressed universal approval of the budget expense using ARPA funds.
SelectBoard member Ron Aponte said he supported the purchase because of its reliability.
“The overarching benefit is that it ensures the accuracy of our actual votes,” he said. “If you think about it, town meeting is our legislative branch; everything goes through there – budgeting, planning, warrant articles, things along those lines. So the $10,000 in my mind is an investment into the accuracy of our town meeting votes.”
