OPINION: Vermont has a voter suppression problem. It’s called Town Meeting.

February 27, 2022 | By Jerry McMahan

Many, mostly Southern, states are now enacting legislation making it more difficult for citizens to vote. This disenfranchisement is blatantly directed at people of color and the working poor, and is rightfully condemned in most national media. 

Pre-pandemic Duxbury Town Meeting at Crossett Brook Middle School. File photo by Gordon Miller

We don’t have this problem in Vermont, right? Wrong. 

We have much worse at the local level. It is the traditional in-person Town Meeting that most small towns still conduct. It occurs on a workday for most people and often lasts the entire day. Many citizens who want to participate in the government of their town would have to sacrifice a day’s pay, or even their jobs in extreme cases, to take part. These voters have effectively had the right to representative government taken from them. 

In most towns, less than 10 percent of voters decide how the town is governed. This entrenched minority generally does not mirror the demographics of the town as a whole. It is ironic that Town Meeting is widely lauded as “democracy” when it is obviously its polar opposite. Another issue with the traditional Town Meeting is that agenda articles and budget line items can be discussed and changed by a vote of those present. Select Boards and others spend weeks hashing out these items. Changing something on the fly after a few minutes of discussion can result in mistakes, unintended consequences, and possible legal issues.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, we got to conduct an interesting unintentional experiment in Vermont. Almost all towns switched to the Australian ballot for all meeting agenda items. In Duxbury where I live, participation went from less than 100 to well over 300. Information on the Secretary of State’s website shows similar numbers for most towns. An article in Seven Days found participation increasing from a factor of 2 to as much as 10, compared to previous in-person Town Meetings.

So we have hard numbers showing that retaining the traditional in-person Town Meeting is an exercise in voter suppression. Disenfranchising two-thirds of citizens who want to vote is not democracy. It probably worked well 200 years ago, but it is simply inappropriate for an allegedly free society in the 21st century.

Unfortunately, change is difficult. Antiquated laws require that the switch from in-person to Australian ballot be made at an in-person Town Meeting, with all the exclusion that goes with that. And many of the small minority who do show up do not want change.

This situation will not change without some sacrifice. I, therefore, urge all Vermonters who care about freedom and democracy to work hard to get a transition to the Australian ballot on the agenda for their Town Meeting in 2023 (If you already have this, good job! Some towns have switched in recent years) and move heaven and earth to show up in person to vote it in. Hopefully, you will only have to do this once.

Jerry McMahan is a member of the Duxbury Selectboard.