I applied to be a member of the town’s once-every-ten-years Charter Review Commission (CRC). I emphasized my background in information technology and my independent research into RI election procedure & laws, and the state’s election technology.
Although I was not seated as a member of the board, I attended all of its meetings but one, which I watched in its entirety via the recorded video.
I offered public comment several times at these meeting, and then offered to the Town Council, on the night the CRC’s final recommendations were presented, a member-of-the-public perspective on the process and on the resulting recommended change to the Financial Town Meeting (FTM). Here it is below:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charging comments were made by this Town Council to the members of this CRC in advance of the group having ever met. The strong message delivered to them was that low levels of citizen engagement in the FTM process was tantamount to voter disenfranchisement, and that this problem needed to be addressed by way of changes to the way the FTM was run. The notion was never considered by this Council, nor by the CRC, that somewhere between much and most of that non-engagement in the process, might very well be attributable to deliberate abstention, and a choice to defer financial decisions to those who are closer to, or more invested in, the process.
It was not long after I began attending the meetings of the CRC, that I began to realise that the same interest expressed by this Council, in the dismantling of the “small-d” democratic method of organic, in-person debate and voting at Financial Town Meetings, was COINCIDENTALLY sweeping through town after town statewide. Upon whose initiative all these towns undertook this same change, as each of their charters came up for renewal, is still unknown to me.
At the second CRC meeting I attended, I heard all about how Tiverton had already dismantled its directly-democratic FTM process, and it wasn’t long thereafter that the choice of an all-day referendum, using state programmed tabulators, was the only option being discussed for our town- even without that option ever having been openly debated by the members of the CRM. Hmmm- it’s almost like they had already known, or should I say, had been informed of, the changes that were to be implemented. So, just like that, the last vestiges of direct and fully transparent democratic FTM vote, gone for one more town.
Who would be the biggest beneficiary of this planned shift? Is it the rare single-parent in town, who is deeply invested in the minutia of the towns budget and just cannot get a sitter for one particular night a year? Or the elder, equally invested, but averse to late-night outings and without an assistant who could help? If these people even exist in our town, is their incidental logistical predicament worthy of the undermining of the full transparency of our towns budget decision process?
The in-person FTM, has been around since before any of us was alive. Now, a statewide power has deemed it to be an impediment. But to what? Surely life in 2024, with all of our conveniences is easier than when this directly democratic process was first rolled out here, two hundred and forty some-odd years ago. Yet, suddenly, in unison, the collective statewide clamor declares that an open-to-all publicly-debated financial plan finalization process, is undemocratic.
As I’ve shared with this Council before, my independent research into Rhode Island’s election laws and systems, has led me to conclude that our ballot-tabulators, which are programmed by state actors, can be made to produce whatever outcome is programmed in. I have also come to know anecdotally, that certain partisan objectives have been historically vulnerable to defeat at the hands of the doggedly-unriggable hand-vote of our current form of Financial Town Meeting. Shifting these FTM votes onto a ballot referendum, whose passage or failure is dictated by a tabulator-produced slip of paper— or should I say a programmed-tabulator-produced slip of paper— would be a very desirable change, for an entity interested in eliminating the possibility of defeat for their unpopular partisan objectives. That is why this is a very dangerous proposed change.
Nobody hearing my claim regarding manipulatable tabulator results, can disprove it. That is because the evidence, either way, is locked away from EVERYONE, at the command of the state. A religious-like faith would be required to believe that tabulators only count the votes on ballots exactly as they are cast, and that the tape reports vote totals accurately. That is because such has never been shown to be true. You would think that true-believers in these tabulators would be happy to allow us to verify their tabulation by allowing us to match the ballots collected in a particular tabulator’s bin, with the numbers on its produced tape. But sadly, this is never ever allowed.
The state has already usurped so much of our town’s and our individual power. Power over our schools; over our children’s health; over our zoning and planning ordinances; over our local voter-rolls, and every aspect of our local elections. Now the state has come back for more control, and the CRC has delivered as charged.
I can speak the truth to the town and to this Council in my 3 minute monologues, but I can’t force anyone to heed my words. The very simple truth is that a system that cannot be verified, cannot be trusted- no matter who is running it. Such a system is unfit for democratic processes. To pretend that this undeniable and completely non-partisan truth doesn’t matter, is to be complicit in the defrauding of every member of your constituency. It’s just that simple.
Finally, since our FTM votes are statutorily NOT subject to the overwhelming restrictions and usurpations of Rhode Island’s Title 17 election laws, if you chose to ignore my admonitions against moving the FTM vote onto ballots, and allowing use of the state’s tabulators, then I call upon this Council to include in the newly prescribed process, the one thing which can possibly eliminate the prospect of rigging. Write into Barrington’s charter, a provision requiring that a public, manual count of all FTM ballots be performed following the completion of the tabulator counts. In this way only, can we verify the vote totals and keep transparency in this important process. Only this step, will remove the incentive of any actor to attempt to override the will of Barrington’s taxpayers for Barrington’s budget and finances. By doing this, this Town Council can prove to the people of Barrington that our interests are your interests, and that you are here to serve us.
Thank you
-Janine