BRATTLEBORO-Some wrinkles in the Brattleboro vote to abolish Representive Town Meeting (RTM) might have begun with the confusing nature of the ballot.
Articles II, III, IV greatly contribute to difficulties in planning subsequent steps to implement the result of the town vote. The purpose of these articles was to select the system to be used by which budget approval and other public questions were determined.
There were three choices: Representative Town Meeting, Australian ballot, and open Town Meeting. Usually, such a question - say, voting among three candidates for one open seat - consists of one article with the added instruction to "vote for one." Not this time. If the voter's choice was the RTM, one had to vote no on Article II - that is, to not discontinue the existing RTM, a double negative to indicate a positive response.
Article III and IV respectively needed a yes vote if one's choice was the Australian or the open Town Meeting. They were each tied in with the results of the overall vote on Article II! The opening to each, "In the event that […] " presented the voter with a logical condition - in fact, two logical conditions. Following the first part, along came an if statement (also a logical condition) as to what would be added to the Town Charter.
To add to the confusion, Article III refers to the first article as Article 2, using the Arabic numeral rather than the Roman numeral. Article IV refers to the first article, not by number but by stating its result: "In the event that Representative Town Meeting is discontinued . . ."
Article III refers to itself as: "this Article 3" and, likewise, Article IV refers to itself as: "this Article 4." Both articles in a statement of what would be added to the Town Charter include the location of that addition as: "Article II, Section 3F." This Article II does not refer to the Article II on the ballot but in the Town Charter.
We then had an Article II, Article III, Article IV, Article 2, Article 3, Article 4, and a second, different Article II.
Article III (Australian) received 1,362 yes votes; Article IV (open Town Meeting) received 1,457 yes votes. The total number of these two is 2,819 votes, more than the total number of voters, 2,442, indicating that some voters voted yes on both articles. There had to be at least 377 such voters and possibly more - up to all 1,362 voters.
My understanding of the ballot was that if one voted yes to discontinue RTM then one would vote yes on either Article III or IV and no on the other one. But apparently some voters understood things differently. I have no understanding of why one would have voted yes on both III and IV.
Therefore, I do think that great care must be taken in further conclusions regarding what the whole town voted for. I do not see that a compromise Charter change can be justified on the basis of the voting.
The first peculiarity that struck me when first seeing the ballot (as published in The Commons prior to voting day) was that if the voting was yes to discontinue RTM and no votes dominated articles III and IV we would have voted to have no system at all.
But I thought that would be very illogical and unlikely. How surprised I was to find out that exactly that is what happened.
Ken McCaffrey
Brattleboro
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at voices@commonsnews.org.