Duxbury: Election comes with reminder of another vote next week
Nov. 11, 2022 | By Lisa ScagliottiVote today and vote again next week – that was the message Duxbury residents got when they showed up to the town polling place on Tuesday outside the town garage and offices.
Before voters exited the election loop, poll workers made sure they handed their neighbors an envelope with a letter about next week’s special vote about Town Meeting Day in March with an invitation to sign up to get regular emails from the selectboard.
First though, the General Election where Duxbury voters supported re-electing incumbent state Rep. Kari Dolan, a Waitsfield Democrat, to a third term and chose Moretown Democrat, Dara Torre to succeed Maxine Grad, also a Moretown Democrat, who steps down in January. Dolan and Torre will represent the Washington-2 district towns of Duxbury, Moretown, Fayston, Waitsfield and Warren. (see chart for vote totals)
The four-way race also included Independent candidates Rebecca Baruzzi of Fayston and Gene Bifano of Warren.
Across the rest of the ballot, Duxbury’s choices mirrored those of the majority of Vermont voters starting with Democrats Peter Welch and Becca Balint for U.S. Senate and House: Republican Gov. Phil Scott for a fourth term; and Progressive/Democrat David Zuckerman to return to serve as lieutenant governor. They supported two amendments to the Vermont state Constitution to clarify the state’s ban on slavery and guarantee reproductive rights.
Duxbury also supported the three Democratic winners in the Washington County state Senate race: incumbents Ann Cummings and Andrew Perchlik along with Montpelier Mayor Anne Watson.
(Scroll down for complete Duxbury election results reported by the town clerk.)
Headlamps and heaters
Election officials who spent the day greeting voters and collecting ballots said there was a steady stream of townspeople coming through the drive-up loop.
And when all was counted, turnout totaled 60% with 726 of the town’s 1,203 registered voters casting ballots.
Because Duxbury has embraced the new outdoor format for voting since 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, voters stay in their vehicles to check in, pull over to mark ballots, and then check out. The setup is simple with a small check-in booth that resembles an ice-fishing shanty and a tent set up across the parking lot where voters drop ballots into a ballot box before they exit.
In between, there is space for voters to pull over and park to mark their ballots.
The arrangement looks quite pleasant during the August primary that takes place completely in daylight on a usually reliably warm day. In November just two days after Daylight Saving Time ended, it was both chilly and dark a full two hours before voting closed.
Elections official Shawnee Perry who spent the whole day on site managed to take photos at both sunrise and moonrise over the little red, white and blue election booth.
Duxbury Town Clerk Maureen Harvey (left) and Brenda Hartshorn from the Board of Civil Authority look up a voter on the checklist inside the warming tent at the election drive-through loop late on Election Day. At right, Shawnee Perry and Hartshorn collect ballots and give voters information about next week's special town meeting. Photos by Lisa Scagliotti
Around 5 p.m. Town Clerk Maureen Harvey along with Board of Civil Authority members Greg Trulson, Brenda Hartshorn and Perry were bundled in coats and keeping comfortable with small space heaters beside them as they worked. The check-in shack had a light inside and the check-out tent had a tabletop lantern. Making her way back and forth between both spots, Harvey wore a small headlamp on her knit hat to shine light where she needed it while keeping her hands free to carry clipboards and flip through the checklist pages.
Harvey said 450 voters either mailed or dropped off their completed ballots before Election Day. On Tuesday, she and the other election workers were surprised by the number of voters who arrived asking for ballots despite having already received one in the mail.
Working in the Duxbury elections check-in booth, Greg Trulson collects a large stack of affidavits from voters requesting fresh ballots. Photo by Lisa Scagliotti
State election procedure allows a voter to request a replacement ballot as long as the voter signs a form to attest to not having already voted. The extra step didn’t deter Duxbury voters who opted to sign the affidavit and then pull over alongside the drive-through loop to fill in the ovals on their new ballot.
As it neared 5:30 p.m., Trulson held up a stack of the orange affidavits as proof of the replacement ballots handed out during the day.
“They rather vote here on Election Day instead of at home,” Harvey said.
As drove up to the checkout tent, Perry held the bright blue ballot box for them to drop their ballots in. As Hartshorn checked the voters off the exit list, Perry reached into a box with envelopes containing letters explaining next week’s special meeting. She added a separate small slip of pink paper explaining the town email outreach that the Selectboard began this summer keep local residents informed about municipal news. Anyone interested in getting the list can sign up online at duxburyvermont.org/contact.
Copies of the letters announcing and explaining the Nov. 16 meeting also were mailed to every household with registered voters in an effort to reach as many people as possible about an extra town vote happening at an unusual time of year.
Selectboard Chair Mari Pratt penned a letter to townspeople urging them to attend to participate in making the Town Meeting decision. Some Harwood students will attend to provide free child care, Pratt writes. And, “the most important thing is you must be present to vote.”
Why hold a special November town meeting?
Election Day was a timely opportunity to spread the word about the Nov. 16 upcoming special meeting set for 7 p.m. at Crossett Brook Middle School. Townspeople are being asked whether they would like to change how March Town Meeting Day voting is handled starting with March 2023.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in spring 2020, Vermont changed voting procedures to allow all communities to conduct their local elections via paper ballots regardless of the format they usually used. Those changes have ended with cities and towns expected to return to their typical Town Meeting Day routines next March.
For Duxbury, that means meeting in person to vote on all of the town’s business and elections. (School items are voted by paper ballot.) The format is referred to as “floor vote.”
Over the past two years, however, Duxbury elections during the pandemic using paper ballots and an outdoor drive-through format have resulted in an increase in voter participation. That’s prompted members of the Duxbury Selectboard and Town Clerk Maureen Harvey to discuss whether it might be time to permanently switch to paper-ballot voting, which could end the often lengthy in-person floor-vote meetings where decisions are made. Town Meeting in March 2020 for example lasted about 7 hours at Crossett Brook Middle School.
The letter to voters about the meeting noted that Duxbury is one of 77 Vermont towns that conducts all of its business via floor vote. Another 45 towns do all business by Australian Ballot exclusively. That leaves 112 that use a combination of those formats, the selectboard letter explains.
Moonrise over Duxbury’s drive-through election setup. Photo by Shawnee Perry
It also included information about attendance at Town Meeting since 2017 and voting over the past several years. In March 2017, 100 people attended Town Meeting in person. By comparison, 348 people voted in this year’s Town Meeting Day election.
“A floor vote annual meeting requires that the residents be present in order to vote on the town’s warning and we have seen a dwindling number of residents able to commit the time to participate,” the selectboard writes to voters.
The information also lists details on budget items from annual meetings since 2017 showing few changes made to spending items at the in-person meetings when changes are possible. When voting by paper ballot, the amounts proposed cannot be altered.
At the Nov. 16 meeting, voters will be asked to discuss and decide three potential changes to town meeting procedures: whether to use Australian Ballot to elect all town officers; whether to decide all budget articles by Australian Ballot; and whether to use Australian Ballot for all other town business.
The board closes by reminding voters that the floor vote format must be used to consider changes for future town meetings, therefore people must attend in person on the 16th to participate.
“The selectboard has tried to make this as convenient as we can so that we may hopefully see a large representative turnout of residents,” the board said.
