Are the Annual Town Meeting "Vote Clickers" Reliable?
The moderator and town clerk cooperated to run the voting system: the moderator would announce that voting was now open, and the clerk would click some buttons on a computer to open voting. After some time passed, the moderator announced that voting was closed and read the totals.
I've started to worry about the clickers for a couple of reasons:
I noticed at this meeting (and at the past two outdoor meetings in 2020 and 2021) that there's a delay between when the moderator announces that voting is open, and when the clicker will successfully transmit your vote. This year I kept a closer eye on it, and for a vote or two it was as long as 10 seconds -- any number of clicks prior to that seemed to be disregarded. When the vote is successfully transmitted the LCD screen on the clicker displays "OK", but it's not especially easy to see. (At the outdoor meetings, after nightfall, my wife and I collaborated under the light from a cellphone to make sure our votes were recorded.)
This year I also noticed that the total number of votes recorded varied rather widely from one vote to the next. It the chart above, you can see that the first article (the budget) received a total of 157 votes. ('m not sure how many attendees were present at the time. The second vote of the night only received 129 votes. Did 28 attendees who voted on the first article really choose not to vote on the second? For Article 7, 166 attendees voted but 21 fewer voted on article 8.
None of the votes at this town meeting were close enough that the variation likely mattered. However, this seems like a system that could be very precise and currently I don't think I'd trust the results if 10 or 20 or even 30 missing votes might change the outcome for 170 attendees.
Here's a table of the votes recorded for the night:
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