by Ed Naile
Of note on the Senate Bill #2 front this past Town Meeting Day, March 8, 2011.
In the town of Barrington, noted for some knock-down drag-outs, there was an effort to rescind SB2, which the town has used for some time.
I am always warned that the rescinding of SB2 in towns all over NH was imminent because liberals hate more people voting more than anything. And liberals run school and town elections like state elections. They have phone operations, voter lists, and municipal help, as well as support from the local press.
But in Barrington secret ballot voting belies the real feelings of the lefties.
The effort to dump SB2 in 2011 failed 166 yes to 1250 no.
Same story in Rye with a vote to rescind – it failed.
And in Auburn we had an unbelievable turnout for an annual meeting, 1,335 out of 5,000 voters! Auburn is a SB2 town and school. With ballot voting you can handle large turnouts. Imagine 1,335 people hashing out fact from fiction with a biased moderator in a traditional meeting. Count me out.
Next, the hapless and apparently happy town of Farmington, which saw only 425 ballots cast at their traditional, old-fashioned, everybody is informed, and we all sit in the front row and knit for the photo-op, town meeting. In a “normal” year a minimum 600 well informed people show up and toss educated bull crap at each other, but I guess the locals just didn’t feel informed enough to vote this time. That is how traditional meetings go, according to opponents.
Fremont had about 830 voters cast ballots Tuesday. Back in 2008 when they first adopted SB2 for the town it was done with 663 total votes. Looks like about 170 more voters are having a say in Fremont and 170 felt too uninformed to vote in Farmington. Our gain – their loss.
Congrats to David Cedarholm who spearheaded a SB2 win in Lee, a rather liberal town appendage of Durham.
And we can add Northwood to the list of ballot voting towns as well.