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Oxford board tests electronic ‘clickers’ and approves election clerks list ahead of June 6 town meeting
Summary
The board demonstrated hand-held voting devices intended for town meeting use and approved a slate of election clerks; officials said voters will be issued clickers and that devices display interim totals while final yes/no counts populate after voting closes (tallies not specified).
The Oxford board tested hand-held electronic voting “clickers” during its meeting and approved the town’s list of election clerks in a short motion.
Town Manager (Speaker 2) explained that registered voters will be issued a single device for town meeting voting and walked the board through its buttons: “if you wanna vote yes, you hit the green button and then the enter button on the top, and that sends your vote to be tallied,” he said, adding voters can change their selection up until the moderator closes the vote. He told the board the device first shows totals while voting is open and, after the vote closes, the system populates the final yes/no counts.
The comment period included a resident who said they are hearing impaired and asked participants to speak up; the commenter also likened clickers to historical battlefield signaling. The board then moved to approve the election clerks list; the motion was made and seconded and the group used the clickers during the vote demonstration. The town manager described the results-display behavior but the transcript does not include numerical tallies.
Why it matters: The devices will be used at the June 6 town meeting, which town staff are preparing to run at the local school. Officials said having board members practice now will help them assist voters during the larger town meeting session. The town manager also said printed and online reference materials for the meeting will be available in advance.
What’s next: Town staff will issue devices to registered voters at town meeting, and the board indicated they will finalize any procedural details before the June 6 session.
