NAHANT — When April Town Meeting ran an endurance-testing seven hours and an August meeting logged high attendance, Town Clerk Margaret Barile decided it was time to pull the plug.
Barile introduced technology to a time-honored town civic exercise last Saturday by handing out electronic clickers to 464 Special Town Meeting attendees. Without paper, pens and pencils to fold and fumble, participants breezed through four warrant articles, clicking “yes” or “no” to record their votes and saved Barile the time it takes to collect paper ballots and tabulate them.
“This technology gave us a clear, accurate and fail-safe count,” declared Barile.
Already in use in large classrooms and convention seminars as a quick way to answer test questions or select discussion options, the voting and tabulating system that debuted at Saturday’s Special Town Meeting is manufactured by Ohio-based Turning Technology.
Barile said the two well-attended town meetings earlier this year convinced her that paper voting and counting is a system that is too prone to errors and too time consuming for large meetings.
After learning the towns of Lynnfield and Rockport use Turning systems in their town meetings, she researched the technology with an eye to introducing it at the Saturday special.
“I pulled it all together in the last three or four weeks,” she said.
Turning arranged to loan the equipment to Barile for the meeting. She said renting clickers and tabulating equipment for future meetings will cost the town between $2,000 and $3,000. Purchasing the equipment, including a sufficient number of clickers, could cost between $10,000 and $17,000.
If it shortens meetings and eases aggravation, then the investment is well worth the money, Barile said.
“It eliminates human error,” she said.
