State Auditor Diana DiZoglio, wants to make herself – and all of her successors – into taxpayer-financed political activists with the authority to ignore the state constitution’s most fundamental principles and to replace the will of the voters and their elected representatives at the state house with her own. Question 1 WILL NOT ratify or…
Category: New England Politics
Could “New England’s Civic Mythology” Become Reality in Post-COVID MA?
Today’s Boston Globe editorial was about how the use of creative ways to hold public meetings during the pandemic expanded opportunities for the public to participate in local governance in the Bay State. The Globe editors, who want these methods to become permanent, write: “In New England’s civic mythology, public meetings are allegedly the building…
A Town Meeting Drinking Game
Google “debate drinking game” and you’ll get about 36 million results. For instance, the semi-official DebateDrinking.com has a set of rules for the 2019/2020 presidential election debates. Google “town meeting drinking game” though, and you get far fewer results. There are a couple of pieces on local politics related drinking games, like this one for…
Compromise in Longmeadow is the smart play
Did unfair treatment of the vanquished after World War I help produce World War II? Sorry, this question is a bit out of my wheelhouse, but I can tell you that if the Longmeadow School Committee doesn’t acknowledge and deal forthrightly with its present fracture, the future with or without the present superintendent will be…
Let the Longmeadow voters have their say.
Elected officials often find themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Should they be more focused on accurately representing the sentiments of those who elected them or should they rely on their own judgment to make decisions about which they have more information than voters? In other words, should they act as delegates or trustees?…
Ranked Choice Voting: If Maine can do it, why can’t Massachusetts?
Interest in election reform seems to have spiked recently around here in the wake of two significant developments, Maine’s first election cycle with ranked choice voting and the enactment of automatic voter registration in Massachusetts. The ability of our northern neighbors to enact ranked choice voting, (a more ambitious electoral reform than automatic voter registration…