Westford, alongside many adjacent towns, has faced challenges with sparse town meeting attendance, usually ranging between 200-300 voters in any given meeting. Currently, there are over 18,000 registered voters in Westford, which means only about 1-2% of voters are deciding for the rest. Long time resident and former finance board member Bill Taffel thinks something should change to get more voters active in the community. His solution: Article 10.
Having moved here to Westford in 1986, Taffel has an extensive history of involvement in town politics. Recently, he has been very vocal about changing town meeting voting requirements to allow residents to vote without attending the meeting.
“I’ve kind of felt like having to go to town meetings to be able to vote on warrant articles is a real obstacle for a lot of people,” Taffel said. “It’s tough to come into a meeting and sit in there for hours, when really, all you want to do is vote. You already know about the issues. You already know how you’re going to vote. You just want to vote.”
Taffel has attended several town meetings where he talked about proposing Article 10, and has also had meetings with members of the Westford Select Board and District Manager Anita Tonakarn-Nguyento, with the hope of being able to better understand the article’s implementation process. He has been trying to change this for a decade, with his first action being a presentation to the Select Board about the issue in 2015, and his most recent one being a citizen’s petition included in the special town meeting in October of this year.
The language of Article 10 is vague and doesn’t include one specific solution. It states that it aims to “enable citizens to vote on warrant Articles without physically attending town Meeting” by allowing town officials and state representatives to work towards changing the format of the meeting. So far, there are two proposed methods of action in the article that Taffel included: method A and method B. These two methods don’t have to be the ones that are used, but it gives the select board some ideas on how they could implement Article 10’s off-site voting demand.
Method A proposes a ballot vote on warrant articles, meaning voters could request a ballot of the questions and mail them in. Meanwhile, method B proposes a hybrid meeting, one that voters could attend remotely and vote without having to be physically present at the meeting. If either of these do get implemented voters could still attend the meeting and vote in-person, but the results may not be ready during the meeting.
There are some concerns from town manager Kristen Las and select board member Scott J. Hazelton about a potential hybrid meeting or a ballot vote, and they are both making sure to be cautious about how to implement Article 10. The main concern for the hybrid meeting is that the technology isn’t developed yet, and they wouldn’t be able to fully ensure voter legitimacy. They also brought up concerns about the structure and effectiveness of a hybrid town meeting.
Because Westford has 18,220 registered voters, and if all 18,220 voters wanted to they could all attend that online meeting. This would inherently cause issues since Google meet can only have a max of 1,000 participants, and Zoom would also max out at 500 participants. This would also bring up network concerns as well, mainly about internet speeds while these meetings are in session and how the town might need to invest a bit more into Westford Academy’s internet to be able to support such a meeting.
There are some workarounds to this issue, one being to keep the voters in a ‘view only mode’ in Zoom or Google Meet. The issues with this are that voters wouldn’t be able to talk during the meeting, the internet may be slow and unreliable, and it would cost the town.
The concern for the ballot vote is that not every article would work with it. For example, if the town were to vote on a budget-related matter, such as the annual budget, if it does not pass, the town would have no budget. So the ballot vote wouldn’t work for everything, but it would work for a lot and it could possibly see a big rise in votes.
Though the meetings with the Select Board had limited success, the citizen’s petition is looking more promising, having passed at the 2024 Special Town Meeting 333 to 268 votes. Taffel has also tried to get the word out about Article 10 by making a website to collect the required amount of signatures needed for a petition, and being interviewed by the Westford Cat where he explains his reason for doing this and his optimal outcome.
“[As of right now], you wind up with 200-300 people to decide for the town [which] seems kind of ridiculous,” Taffel said.
In Addison, Vermont residents can use ballot voting to vote on issues, since they aren’t operating under an open town meeting form of government. Overall, around 65% of the total amount of their registered voters come to vote in Addison, with more than half of the votes coming from ballots. This is substantial compared to Westfords 1-2%.
“Let’s not let perfection get in the way of improvement,” Hazelton said.
A lot can be done to improve town meeting voter turnout; this is only the first step according to Taffel. Much of the language still has to be developed, the town still has to vote again on what the final outcome of Article 10 will be, and Massachusetts state legislators and representatives have to sign it.
“While I don’t think finding a solution will be either easy or quick, I think the passage of Article 10 [at the special town meeting] got the issue on the radar screen, so hopefully its resolution will be factored in going forward,” Taffel said.
