I attended a special town meeting in the middle school gym this evening. It was a really interesting experience with local politics and democracy in general.
A business from a neighboring town had circulated a petition that proposed a change to our town laws. Representatives for each side presented their argument for or against the change . . .
. . . then any citizen who wanted to could walk up to a microphone and voice their opinions. Most were against the proposal. One person was for it. One old guy just cracked a few jokes to make everyone laugh. After a bunch of people had said their piece, a woman came to the microphone and proposed that we vote on the matter. The person leading the meeting asked the crowd if we were ready to vote, and nearly everyone said, "Aye!" Just like that, the discussion was over, and he put the proposal to a vote.
The vote-counting system was pretty unscientific. The meeting leader asked who was in favor of the petition, then who was against it, and whichever group was louder won. In this case, it was easy to tell--the nay-voting crowd was several times louder than the aye-voters. The leader said the motion failed, then hundreds of people made a beeline for the doors to get out of that hot, muggy gym.
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