The Bethel School Board has been asked to hold a special meeting on November 2nd at 6 p.m. to determine if next March’s School Budget Meeting (as well as future meetings) will be replaced by an Australian ballot vote.
At first glance, this seems like a good idea. The evening meeting is replaced by the ability to stop by the school any time all day, enter a private voting booth, vote yes or no on the warned school budget, and be done with it. Australian ballot is a well-intentioned effort to include more people in decision making but it destroys town meeting in the process.
Australian ballot is quick, easy, private, unaccountable and, simple. It is also deadly. Deadly because it kills town meeting, and because it does it slowly, so that people almost don’t notice. Susan Clark spoke in Bethel last December. Research she did along with Frank Bryan studied 1,435 meetings in 210 Vermont towns over 28 years and found that attendance at town meetings falls off after towns switch to Australian ballot. In their book 'All Those In Favor" they say “We are told it will save town meeting, while the reality is that it poisons it and lets it die slowly”.
Voting by Australian ballot removes the option of amending a budget, so flexibility is forfeited. It deletes our ability – our duty – to participate fully. The right to question, deliberate, compromise and amend is lost. Taking part in a town meeting allows citizens to affect policy. It allows us to work in partnership with our school board and our select board to create appropriate policies.
With Australian ballot the boards never know why a budget was voted up or down. The process becomes less efficient in terms of both time and money spent because allowing citizens the right to change town budgets from the floor often satisfies objectors and avoids the time consuming process of re-voting a budget again and again, which often happens with the Australian ballot system.
Advocates argue that the ‘informational meeting’ the night before fills the void, but in practice these meetings are no substitute for town meeting decision making and historically they are poorly attended.
Clark and Bryan’s research also shows that meetings at night or on Saturdays have no higher turnout than Tuesday meetings. We found this out in Bethel when the school board switched to evening meetings. Attendance was no higher.
So if you are worried that flexibility and social capital will be lost by giving up our town meeting type of local government, we urge you to attend the November 2nd meeting at the school gym and to vote ‘no’ to this change to our school meeting.
Victoria Weber + Davis Dimock
(Note that this posting reflects our personal opinions about Australian ballot and does not reflect any committee that we serve on.)
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