So, yesterday, the town of Windsor, Connecticut had its annual budget referendum. Although last year it took three tries to get the referendum passed (with a 1% mill rate hike, down from an originally-proposed 5%), this year the referendum passed on the first try by a wide margin. The fact that the mill rate was left unchanged (increased revenue derived from new development) might have had something to do with that.
This was also Windsor’s first foray into electronic voting. Our old 1950’s era levered voting machines have been replaced with optical scan ballots.
Getting in and out was fairly painless — show ID, receive a paper ballot, go over to mark the ballot in one of the “booths” with a provided felt-tip pen, and then be directed over to feed the ballot into an optical scan machine.
I like it. The town gains some efficiencies, both in the tallying of votes and in number of voters who can simultaneously vote. (Last November, we had two lever machines operating; yesterday we had six ballot-filling areas set up.) And, the citizens who care gain some comfort in the fact that there exists a manually-filled-out piece of paper that represents an individuals’ vote, just in case there’s any concerns about the accuracy of an electronic tally.
I’m just disappointed that when I voted, right before closing time, I was only the 245th person to vote in the precinct. It’s not surprising…but it is disappointing.