Democracy in Action–Small Town Style

If all politics are local, our small suburban village proved last night, that tricky as it may be, it still works.

State law requires that municipalities of less than 5,000 inhabitants establish a caucus system for picking candidates to run for elected positions such as mayor or trustee. Both in 2018 and this year, I have served on the selection committee of the Caucus Party, charged with following state guidelines to pick a slate of candidates to be presented to the populace for placement on the final ballot.

Back in 2018 things were a breeze. Our committee met in person early in the summer and multiple times thereafter. We searched the community for interested candidates and reviewed their responses to questionnaires. We held a day-long session in Village Hall to interview each candidate and at the end of the day chose a slate to present to the community. The Village meeting to approve the slate was a dry affair, with barely a handful of registered voters joining us.

Those were of course the DBC (days before COVID.) This year the whole shebang was a bit more complicated. As with many businesses we spent our initial meeting figuring out how we would get a Zoom account that would provide us with all the bells and whistles we would need. We assigned various technological tasks that had not been necessary, or even thought of, two years before. We upgraded a website–and began to hope we could pull this off.

Using a combination of snail mail, newspaper postings, email blitzes, and personal contacts, the committee found an abundance of qualified applicants vying for a place on the slate. Questionnaires via email were a snap. All interviewing was done during a one-day Zoom meeting, which worked almost flawlessly thanks to a rehearsal by the committee a few nights before. On-line polling of the committee let us choose the candidates that we felt were appropriate for the slate.

That left one last hurdle. How to have a community meeting, limited to registered voters, at which the voters would approve the slate? Residents were again notified by multiple means that to attend the meeting they would need to send us their name and email address at least 2 days before the meeting. We would use their names to verify they were registered voters and their email addresses to send them a link to the Zoom meeting.

And word spread. We received over 100 requests to attend the meeting–a community record. I was appointed (or did I foolishly volunteer?) as the gatekeeper–matching the people arriving in the Zoom waiting room with the verified voters, and allowing them to pass into the meeting. That proved trickier than expected. The names that I saw in the waiting room were the names people have assigned to their computer/laptop/phone, not the name they had used to register. It took a bit longer than expected, but we figured it out.

So we had our meeting. And voters, using Zoom polling technology, approved the slate. Those lucky candidates will now be on the ballot for the (hopefully in-person) municipal election in the spring.

Every vote, every election, counts.

Like what you read here? Add your name to our subscription list below. No spam, I promise!
___

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

//s3.amazonaws.com/downloads.mailchimp.com/js/mc-validate.js(function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]=’EMAIL’;ftypes[0]=’email’;fnames[1]=’FNAME’;ftypes[1]=’text’;fnames[2]=’LNAME’;ftypes[2]=’text’;}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true);

———————————–