There are still a lot of towns in New Hampshire that gather every year for Town Meeting. In a crowded room, all your neighbors raise their hands and say yeah and nay in front of everyone else. It could always get contentious, but in today’s political climate, you could get branded or targeted. There’s a cure for that.
SB2 was the Senate Bill that allowed towns to switch to a secret ballot for casting votes on town business, budgets, warrant articles, and so on. You got the chance to have your say and keep your anonymity. It’s not mandatory, but a town can vote for it using a ballot, just not in the traditional sense. If someone wants to switch to server balloting for future “elections” and town business – at present – you have to do that during town meeting, by submitting your ballot to the moderator.
It’s still sort of secret, but you walk up and hand in your ballot. There is legislation to change that to make it a truly secret ballot vote.
To quote a reader, HB1175 “If enacted, would restore the original (pre-2019) language by providing for an all-day vote by secret ballot at the polls to decide whether or not to adopt SB2 voting.”
The new (old) verbiage looks like this.
III. The local political subdivision shall place the question on the warrant of the annual meeting under the procedures set out in RSA 39:3 or RSA 197:6, and the question shall be voted on by official ballot in accordance with the procedures established in RSA 669:19-29, RSA 670:5-7, and RSA 671:20-30, including all requirements pertaining to absentee voting, polling places, and polling hours.
There are no vote-by-mail ballots for town meetings; you have to show up, but again, that tends to lower participation in what are often (even in SB2 towns) underperforming events. Local elections attract a fraction of registered voters, yet these are what – at least around here – determine the majority of the taxes you will pay in a year. That disinterest baffles me, but I can see why you might be reluctant to sit in a room all day and raise your hand or yell yay or nay. SB2 creates the opportunity to enhance local participation.
Secret ballots allow for informed no voters to intercede in the wreckless spending antics of (primarily) the public school system, which sucks up about 70% of the average local budget.
SB2 won’t fix that, and HB1175 doesn’t make every Town SB2; you still get to decide that locally, but if it passes, it might encourage a few towns to consider a move that is a step in that “right” direction, and that was the original intent of the law.
