History of Town Meeting in New England
Origins of Small Town Government and Direct Democracy
Jun 17, 2009
The town meeting is as ingrained into the New England image as the local sheriff, potluck dinners, and church on Sundays. Long used as an open forum (anyone can have a say) to discuss and vote on issues such as school budgets, local zoning, and road repair it is loosely based on a democratic practice developed in Athens around 400 B.C and has represented small town government in New England for over 300 years.
Direct Democracy
Although the town meeting is often thought of as a purely New England convention it is worth noting that two cantons in Switzerland still practice a 700-year old tradition of direct democracy called the "Landsgemeinde" (open-air assembly). This assembly is similar to the American meeting, with the notable and curious exception that it takes place outside in the open air. With up to 6,000 participants this can be quite an ordeal, and votes are often estimated. But the energizing and empowering effect of participating in active legislation carries the same Colonial fire.
The first recorded gathering of voters in America took place in Dorchester, MA in 1633. According to the Dorchester Athenaeum online, a Town Meeting Square tablet commemorates the approximate location of the meeting house, which was also used as a school. The gist of this historic first was that the townsmen, by vote, agreed to meet at regular intervals to see to the "good and well ordering of the affayres of the Plantation." Soon after, the greater Boston area had begun adopting the process.
Today's town meetings are eerily similar to the ones held 300 years ago, claims Christopher Collier, in a New York Times article by Charlotte Libov. To emphasize why the Connecticut State Historian adds, 'It's obviously the most democratic form of government one can imagine. It's the closest to the people, it involves the largest number of people, its the most open."
Open Forum Ideals
"One man, one vote" is often the mantra of town meeting proponents, and that one vote still carries a significant amount of weight. In Connecticut alone 92 of the 169 municipalities still rely on the town meeting as their primary decision-making process in matters of local government. And as of 2008, 170 out of 237 Vermont towns voted on local matters by some kind of annual town meeting protocol, according to the Vermont Secretary of State online.
At one point in history the political momentum behind town meeting ideals was so influential that is spawned an NBC public service project, America's Town Meeting of the Air, broadcast weekly from 1935 to 1956. It attracted up to 3,000,000 listeners weekly, and more than 1,000 discussion clubs were formed to listen to the broadcasts and to debate the issues raised.
Indeed, with all of this energizing and patriotic vigor, the open forum and direct democracy seemed to have gained everlasting appeal, at least as evidenced by the Commission on Presidential Debates when it announced in 2008 that the second presidential debate would be an "open forum in a town hall meeting setting."
Town Meeting In Decline
But from vastly popular to quietly existent, the town meeting is now in danger of being snubbed by the very people it is supposed to empower. According to Collier, from the same Times article as cited above, "I've been to town meetings where issues were decided by as few as eight persons."
In Vermont alone, according a 2008 poll posted online by the Vermont Secretary of State, only a little more than 10 percent of the state population voted at the annual town meeting (either on the floor or by Australian Ballot). And in 2009, that number dropped to a paltry 7.2 percent.
Joseph Zimmerman, legislative historian and author of The New England Town Meeting: Democracy in Action notes that this modern participatory apathy doesn't stop at politics. He links it to a comprehensive decline in civic involvement, from the Elk's Club to the volunteer fire department.
Whatever the source of the problem, it appears it is going to take some Yankee ingenuity to reintroduce the town meeting to a digital-hungry and decidedly more hurried modern society.
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