Town Meeting participation under the microscope

Town Clerk Janet Murphy and Town Moderator Ripley Hastings at the October 2025 Special Town Meeting, where more than 470 residents, or about 5.5% registered voters, considered the MBTA Communities Act zoning plan. One of the Town Meeting Study Committee’s goals is to boost resident participation at Town Meeting. (Nicole Mordecai/Weston Observer)

While there are more than 8,600 registered voters, a fraction – typically ranging around 3% to 6% – come together each May for Weston’s Annual Town Meeting.

A new town committee is taking a deep dive into Weston’s Town Meeting to develop recommendations intended to improve, streamline and expand access to the community’s legislative body. The current guiding those goals is to take that 3% attendance rate and increase it dramatically.

The Town Meeting Study Committee, now several meetings into its existence, is working to develop its final report by an end-of-year deadline, which will then inform a recommendation, if any, to the Select Board for potential changes, or at least a vote on how residents feel, on next year’s Annual Town Meeting Warrant.

In its work, the committee is expected to address a wide range of questions about Town Meeting, including: How can Town Meeting participation be improved, and is remote participation, if legal for an open town meeting, an option? Would Weston benefit from an (unlikely) switch to representative town meeting? How can residents get as much information as possible in the lead-up to Town Meeting?

“[Our goal is to] try to build on what’s been done in the past,” said Moderator Ripley Hastings, who appointed the committee’s members. “We all have our own opinions here, that’s why we’re all on this committee … I would envision that we would end up with a vision of what Weston ought to do here.”

Committee members include Anne Benning, Michael Harrity, Ron Malur, Beth Nolan and John Sallay. Non-voting, ex-officio members include Hastings, Select Board Chair John McDonald and Town Clerk Janet Murphy. Residents approved the creation of the committee at May’s Annual Town Meeting.

While the work has just begun, Hastings said the committee has quite a bit of reference material to look back on, including a 2012 and 2015 Weston Town Meeting study, as well as Concord’s 2025 Town Meeting Study Report.

At the heart of the committee’s mission is to make Town Meeting more inclusive, effective and responsive to the needs and desires of the town. A key aspect of that is increasing participation, with remote voting options potentially opening the door to people with disabilities, parents of young children and others who may have not have the time, energy or opportunity to travel to Weston High School at 7 p.m. on a Monday night.

“Should we be making people jump through hoops in order to exercise their fundamental rights?” Sallay said. He notes, however, the committee will need to consider unintended consequences of any possible changes to Town Meeting.

Closed captions in Weston High School’s gym, where overflow voters were sent at the October 2025 Special Town Meeting. The Town Meeting Study Committee is considering recommendations to improve accessibility at Town Meeting. (Nicole Mordecai/Weston Observer)

The question of remote voting at Town Meeting is not about the technology – those “barriers are not insurmountable,” according to Hastings – rather the question is whether it is legal to allow remote participation at town meeting beyond Americans With Disabilities Act compliance, and if online participation erodes community and the deliberation process.

“Do we feel having people truly face-to-face, carrying on a tradition is important, or do we think that deliberation can occur given that technology seems to be able to allow it?” Harrity said.

*Clickers at the October 2025 Special Town Meeting. These devices are one of the major technological changes being implemented at town meetings across Massachusetts. (Nicole Mordecai/Weston Observer)*

Harrity noted that Town Meeting has changed since its inception in the early days of New England, and that technology is a more recent aspect to be considered.

“We started out with, you had to be a property owner, you had to be a male, you had to be white, you had to be over 21,” Harrity said. “We’ve eliminated all those, and maybe those are social ones, but we’ve also added clickers, which is the beginning of technological input to make it a more efficient meeting. To me, this is just moving along a path that’s been well-established since the 1780s, when somewhere in there, we eliminated property ownership [as a barrier].”

Other important points the committee will consider is voter education and how to ensure residents are informed on complex warrant articles ahead of Town Meeting, the current format of Weston’s typically single-night meeting and general management of warrant articles, among other topics.