Q: What is the effect of the standing counted vote on the length of town meeting?

A standing counted vote is called by the moderator when a voice vote fails to give a definitive result or the the vote requires an exact count due to the 2/3rds quantum of a zoning or borrowing article.

The process is to divide the audience into two groups in serial.  The first group voting in favor (YAY) is asked to rise and be counted.  The second group voting against (NAY) is asked to rise and be counted.  The process of counting involves pairs of tellers who have the job of roaming around the audience with clipboards and counting standing people who are then told to sit down when counted.  And the end of the process, all tellers report to the moderator and clerk and the totals are computed.  The moderator then calls the result of the vote.

As the audience size becomes larger and larger, this method becomes more difficult and is always subject to human error just as the audible shouting method is.

Consider the standing counted votes of both the STM November 2009 vs. the same at ATM May 2010

The average attendance of the STM November 2009 was almost twice as large as the average attendance of the ATM May 2010.

By coincidence, both meetings had 7 standing counted votes each and the time to count was 162 mins vs. 90 mins.

(Note that the 2nd standing counted vote was cut short by a retraction of the article which is an odd situation so it was only 3 minutes.  If it had not been withdrawn early then we might have associated it with another 10 mins so the comparison would have been 162 mins vs. 100 mins.)

The key here is that with Electronic Voting, these 262 mins would have been replaced by 14 minutes (or less depending upon the voting window chosen).. giving a net saving of about 250 mins or over 4 hours of your personal time.

4 hours is about the time it takes to hold one night of town meeting.  This directly translates into actual dollars saved by the town of Wayland and this would continue on each year that we use this technology.

Q: What is the effect of this cost savings on your personal time?

Since this has to do with personal time then this is a personal question.

So the question back to you is:  What is your personal time worth per hour?   or   How much do you spend on child care per hour to attend town meeting?  and  What is the sum of the two equal to for you?

Buts lets take an example:

Personal time:        $40 / hour

Child care time:      $20 / hour

Total time:              $60 / hour

For 4 hours thats $240.  This is not an unreasonable amount to believe for a typical Wayland resident who has child caring needs.

Now multiply these figures by the number of people in attendance which can be 500 or 1,000 or 2,000.

It really starts to add up doesn’t it?

Q: If we purchased this equipment what would it cost voter?

• In one model we would take the cost of the equipment and divide it by the number of times it is used.   

    Wrong

• In another model we would take the cost of the equipment and divide it by the number of town meeting attendees.

    Wrong

Here is the right way to look at this.

Town meeting affects EVERY Wayland resident whether any particular resident attends or not.  When town meeting spends money, we all spend money.  When town meeting sells property or buys property we all do that.  When town meeting changes zoning of a property, we all live with the consequences of that.  Town meeting is that important.

Not only does it affect every citizen, it affects every citizen potentially for decades.

So it isn’t the number of times it is used, or the number of people attending, it is much much bigger than that.

So lets take a more representative example.

There are approximately 9,000 registered voters in all of Wayland.   9,000 taxpayers so to speak.

If the equipment costs $150,000 to buy and over 5 years we spend another $36,000 on warranty and maintenance then the $186,000 would be spread over 9,000 people for those 5 years.

This works out to be $20 per registered voter over the 5 years or $4 per registered voter per year.

Now compare that to the $240 for one town meeting session in one year.

Q: Does accuracy figure into cost savings?

In a word:  Absolutely

What is the cost of making an incorrect decision?

An incorrect decision is, by definition, a decision which does not reflect the actual will of the people.

How can that happen without electronic voting?

1. •The shout method is flawed due to acoustics and the human ear.
   

2. •The standing counted vote is flawed due to uncertainties in counting, standing, sitting or body movement
   

3. •Non registered voters can possibly vote, there are no absolute safeguards against this.
   

Electronic Voting handles all of this precisely.

Q: Are there any other cost savings models associated with Electronic Voting?

There is one more and this one will take a little imagination.

Electronic voting gives us something that we never could easily have had before.  Privacy of the vote at town meeting.

When you are free to vote with you heart, vote with your mind and vote with your pocketbook, you will no longer feel pressured or intimidated into voting for things that you don’t feel comfortable about.  You may feel that they are too expensive and you have a right to feel that way. You should not be pressured into spending your tax dollars on things that others are wishing for but you really don’t want - or cannot afford.

Even this electronic voting initiative.  It will cost money to give you speed, accuracy and privacy.

Ultimately, it will be for you to decide whether these things are really worth the price.

I think its worth the price and this website has been created to help you make up your own mind.

But one thing is for sure.

With electronic voting, we will naturally spend less money at town meeting because we will be free to do that privately.

And this is yet another reason why...

Privacy is Priceless !