A friend asked me at Town Meeting why there were armed police present. She felt intimidated by the police presence. I pointed out to her that they were there to protect us, and I meant that seriously.
One of the foundational rules of our democracy is that the people are forbidden to bring weapons to a polling place (13 VSA §4027, 17 V.S.A. § 2510), and a #TownMeeting in #Vermont #VT law qualifies. Furthermore, our Town Meeting takes place at #Brattleboro Union High School … #VTpol #VTpoli
My speech regarding the #Brattleboro #Vermont #VT Human Services budget, at #TownMeeting 2026, from 5:20:07 through 5:24:18. My actual motion to amend Article 8 to raise the Human Services budget from $1 back to the originally allocated $482,665, is at 5:53:25, which after some confusion over the wording, eventually passed 144-101. The vote is at 6:19:56. #VTpol #VTpoli
In other news, we voted in person for the first time since the pandemic started yesterday. I dropped the ball on getting our absentee ballots for town meeting, so down we went. It was good to see the ladies running the voting tables. They're so nice. And no word was said about our masks.
The 2 non-fascists running for the select board also won, so yay!
#Vermont #TownMeeting
#Brattleboro #Vermont #TownMeeting
Tuesday March 3
Vote NO on Article II
Vote NO on Article III
Vote YES on Article IV
Adapt xckcd 2501 to your area of abstruse specialization.
https://marshdeer.github.io/xkcd2501-generator/
via @overholt
Here is a spreadsheet of the Top 11 municipalities in #Vermont by population (2020 Decennial Census Data), showing the number of registered voters in 2025, how many voted, what type of #elections and #TownMeeting they hold, what type of government they have, and their votes on the FY26 budget (#VT SecState reported data) Of them, the City of #Burlington and the Town of #Brattleboro are the only two that do not hold a townwide ballot to approve the municipal budget.
All societies above a certain size and scope are better governed by representation. The voters of #Brattleboro understood this in the 1960s, when they made the change to Representative Town Meeting. Are we more wise than they?
by Gemma Seymour, Tuesday, February 3, 2026 — Issue 851
https://www.commonsnews.org/issue/851/851rtm_seymour
#Vermont #VT #VTpol #VTpoli #VTelections #TownMeeting #TownMeetingDay
New England has direct democracy for town government in many towns. Which means that anybody can go to town meeting where we decide on the budget and zoning laws and pretty much anything in the town. There are committees that figure out the important bits, and there's a board of selectmen and various other elected boards, but it's the people who actually get to decide.
It's a bit of a zoo. Because anybody can get up and object to something and make an amendment -- and they do! And then they object to the meeting moderator's call of the voice vote and make us all have a standing vote. But, it is still kind of cool, despite everything taking way longer than it ought to. We were there for five hours on Monday night and four hours on Tuesday night.
Of course, in some ways it's really "non-representative democracy", because a lot of people don't go, because it's not convenient for them to be awake until midnight (it wasn't really convenient for me, but I stayed anyway), or they just don't care enough to spend their evening sitting around the high school auditorium listening to people drone on about this or that planning board initiative.
Gemma Seymour
MFennVT has moved
Gemma Seymour
Jessamyn
Judy Anderson
Matthew Nadler