Nancy is a writer, knitter, cook, and fulltime Windham resident since 2001.
If our little southern Vermont town, Windham, ever puts up an iconic sculpture to decorate our public space, surely it will be a downward spiral. We might even develop a charming village tradition, wherein adventurous townsfolk honor Windham’s predicament by climbing up and sliding down, ever so slowly, into a nice muddy pit.
That muddy pit is where we find ourselves slugging it out these days. One might be tempted to blame our town’s woes on our desperate, divisive struggle over wind turbine siting seven years ago. And while that struggle may have tainted the atmosphere a bit, the roots of our town’s difficulties go much further back: We’re at odds over our little school and have been for decades; and we continue to disenfranchise many of our voters, lots of whom have good ideas and strong community involvement.
As for the school, for the past several years Windham folk have lived together in a sort of stupefied peace, with stable, responsible school staff and a powerful communitywide willingness to overlook steadily declining enrollment and steadily rising school tax.
There were skirmishes, of course, including one a couple of years ago, when more than half the town voted to close the school in an Australian ballot referendum; allegations of voter fraud ensued during a revote demanded by the never-closers; tempers flared, as-yet unresolved lawsuits were joined, parents revolted. But the ever-diminishing school crept on, impervious as a tortoise.
But the school’s gentle downward spiral accelerated rapidly last spring with the departure of the longtime teaching principal and the subsequent resignation of the school’s only other teacher.
As efforts to restaff the school before the August deadline grew desperate, parents grew restive. When the school was finally staffed, parents of more than a quarter of the school’s student body removed their kids to other schools. There was widespread disillusionment with the workings of the school board and a sense that an opportunity to consider alternatives to our tiny school had been lost.
Now, two months into the school year, serious trouble has bubbled up within the school, with several school parents sharply critical of both the lack of curriculum and decisions made about the school environment. As usual, the never-closers have bent the facts to serve their needs, blaming unhappy parents and inquisitive town officials for the apparent difficulties of school staff, and insisting, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, that the school is still a model to be emulated by all Vermont communities.
But wait. Where, you might ask, have all the concerned citizens been, citizens who might have studied the facts and the options and found creative solutions that would halt the downward spiral of both school and town? One possibility is that these citizens are simply lazy or cynical. But another, more compelling, possibility is that many of us have been disenfranchised by town hardliners’ insistence that we continue to conduct all town business by floor vote at an annual town meeting.
A possible result of this hard line is that few people take an active interest in town government, allowing a small group of hardliners to tend to town business, with, in some cases, disastrous results.
Due to the Covid-era temporary transition to Australian ballot, our town has had a perfect opportunity to compare voter behavior when ballots can be voted during a period of time, instead of only during town meeting. While in two Covid-era Australian ballot town meetings, an average of 61.7% of registered voters voted, the average for the last two town meeting floor votes was only 37.6%. Voter participation for both younger (18-59 years) and older (60+ years) voters at the two Australian ballot town meetings significantly increased, with voter turnout among younger voters nearly doubling.
These data suggest that in-person floor voting is a powerful stopper for many voters, however traditional it may be. In fact, when confronted with these figures, hard-liners cite tradition as their major objection to switching to Australian ballot voting.
And while many good things can be said for tradition, ancient rules that disenfranchise young workers and vulnerable older folks surely don’t deserve to be honored any more.
Unfortunately, one way for us to begin to creep out of the mud and up that downward spiral, by instituting Australian ballot and getting issues and candidates before the voters over a period of time, is made more difficult by a sort of Catch-22: Our town’s voters can only decide that future votes will be by Australian ballot in, you guessed it, a floor vote at town meeting. If you’re at work that day, or sick, or have mobility issues, or are afraid of contracting Covid, well, it’s the muddy pit for you. In perpetuity.
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