Don't Vote This Year

With the Town Election happening this Saturday my advice to the voters of Arlington is this:

Don’t vote for candidates you do not know would be good at the job.

Do of course turn out and vote. There aren't many contested open seats for town wide offices. As a result I think turnout will be especially low this year, but would love to discover that I’m wrong.

This year I’m interested in seeing what happens way, way down on the ballot in the Town Meeting races.

If voters approach their ballots under the false idea that filling in the full number of ovals allowed is the responsible thing to do, not a lot will change.

If though voters realize that the statement “Vote for not more than four” does not mean that they should vote for four as if they were cleaning up their dinner plates in sympathy with children elsewhere that were starving, and instead only cast votes for candidates they have learned will do the job, we could see some shifts in many precincts, and the removal of members that have failed to attend Town Meeting for - in some cases - years.

So my hope for this election is that voters fill in the ovals on their ballots *on purpose,* for good reasons.

I have compiled a spreadsheet showing attendance records of all members on the ballot this year, and posted it here.

I encourage people to look up who is on the ballot in their precinct, and make an informed choice.

This is also the first year voters can actually review how their Town Meeting members voted on articles in Town Meeting.

There are links at the bottom of this page that say :“Votes Utilizing Electronic Voting System.”

By finding what night the issue you are curious about was voted on here, that’s the link from “2014 ATM and STM Voting by Article,” you can look up the voting records for that night and see how your Town Meeting members voted.

For example, you can review whether or not your Town Meeting members voted to put the issue of adopting the Community Preservation Act before the town by following this link and looking at the column labeled “Article 22: ACCEPTANCE OF LEGISLATION/COMMUNITY PRESERVATION ACT”:

Transparency in the operations of our local government is slowly coming. As it does so the question becomes: will the voters take advantage of it?