Reviewing Town Meeting 2023 records I read the detailed official voting records of each session. Much to my surprise, I saw votes on right triangles in Euclidian space? What? Redefining geometry itself seems like a bit of a stretch for Arlington TMM members, although little would surprise me there.
Arlington Votes On Free Speech, Triangles, Stenography
Did you know that Arlington’s official town meeting vote summaries includes these questions?
- Will the Town Meeting finish in five nights? (motion fails: Yes: 101, No: 102, Abstain: 11)
- Do you enjoy discussing budgets? (motion passes: Yes: 122, No: 71, Abstain: 19)
- Are there more precincts in Arlington than [keys] on a stenographic keyboard? (motion passes, even though it’s not true: Yes: 99, No: 87, Abstain: 21)
- I support free speech for people I disagree with. (motion passes: Yes: 202, No: 7, Abstain: 13)
- The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides in a Euclidian 2-space. (motion passes: Yes: 143, No: 81, Abstain: 0)
- Tonight will be the final night of 2023 annual town meeting. (motion passes: Yes: 193, No: 8, Abstain: 2)
At first I thought this was someone in the IT department checking to see if anyone actually reads the Electronic Voting Reports. But I realized these are just the test votes used to ensure that the remote keypads each TMM uses to vote on articles is working.
Watch the TM Moderator showing their stenography chops when discussing the test vote one night.
About New England Town Meeting
Read more about the traditions and culture behind New England Town Meetings, a rich history of direct democracy stretching back to the first colonies.
- Start with the Massachusetts Moderators Association, which publishes the de facto guides to how TMMs actually work.
- Wikipedia has a surprisingly detailed article discussing how different states do TM.
- New England Historical Society tracks the oldest town meetings by state, where of course Plymouth claims the first (although Dorchester had a claim too). Who knew it wasn’t until 1715 that the Commonwealth started requiring TM to elect a moderator!
- Early Menotomy / Northwest Cambridge town meetings are cataloged at the Arlington Historical Society.
- Real Democracy: New England Town Meeting And How It Works is a scholarly investigation of how TMM actually works over three decades across New England.