Paul Mills, a Farmington attorney, has moderated more than 250 town meetings in Maine, including those this year in New Vineyard, Farmington, New Sharon and Chesterville. He can be reached at [email protected].

The town meeting. As we ring the bell on the 250th birthday of national democracy, it’s time to take a look at the meeting’s own legacy along with its contemporary counterpart.

This is nowhere else better illustrated than in a town that resonates with grassroots democracy as few others: New Vineyard, the Franklin County town that is perhaps best known as the place tourists race through just leaving nearby Farmington on their way to Sugarloaf. It’s also a 10-mile stretch where over a hundred trucks each day hauling millions of gallons of bottled water whisk through on their way down from Kingfield.

This year’s assembly, on March 28, was a filled-to-the-rafters turnout. It also attracted such outside Fourth Estate interests as former Channel 13 WGME News Director Andre Cormier and his current West Central Maine Cable-newspaper outlets along with The Maine Monitor’s seasoned journalist Ben Hanstein.

But first a bit of background.

The roots of local direct democracy such as that held in New Vineyard can be traced to the popular assemblies of 5th century BC ancient Athens. The Athenian Ecclesia met some 40 times a year in this era. The 13th century Swiss Landsgemeinde would be the next landmark, this being an annual meeting that some Swiss hamlets or “cantons” observed. It’s a system no longer observed in Greece and only in a handful of Swiss localities. Ever since the first American town meeting convened in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1633 it has been a mainstay of New England local government.

Attempts by King George and Parliament to abolish it in 1774 was a spark that led Paul
Revere and John Hancock to lead the uprising that inaugurated the nation’s 1776
revolt. Its resilience not only during the Revolution but decades later was such that the
practice flourished in hundreds of new settlements in this era.

In 1802, they included the newly incorporated New Vineyard. Town meetings were still being conducted in Boston even by the time Maine became a state in 1820. (Boston didn’t become a city until after our separation from Massachusetts.)

The town meeting was also the form of government for Portland until 1832. It’s still the most popular form in Maine, conducted in some 400 of the state’s 482 municipalities. It still has a stronghold in hundreds of small towns elsewhere in New England and occasionally in some states such as Minnesota outside the region.

The New Vineyard version is different than most in Maine today. That’s because it closely adheres to the 17th century roots of the institution and because unlike most towns now its officers are nominated from the floor. The system — still used in about 75 towns and plantations in Maine — affords significant advantages.

Among them:

a) The ability of voters to hear from and ask questions of the candidates immediately before they make their choices; it’s a form of hold their feet to the fire accountability.
b) Provides in effect for a run-off election in the event no candidate achieves a majority, a common occurrence when there are three or more candidates. Such an option is not available in most other Maine towns.
c) Allows for a candidate who loses in an election for one office to run for another in the same meeting without having to sit out and wait another year.

Voter privacy is still afforded even in this open format by the required use of written paper ballots when the actual voting occurs. Though the ballots are not pre-printed, voters simply write down their preference on small blank pieces of paper handed out to them and then deposit them in the ballot box.

In New Vineyard, the first contested office was that of electing a new member to the select board to fill the position being vacated by long-term chair Jeffrey Allen. The candidates, Eddie Adams and Frank Forster, both made presentations and responded to various questions on their qualifications and views.

From Adams: “Resident since ’93; my family been here a hundred years … I think I can bring some accountability to where the monies are going. Making sure everyone is holding up on their bids.” Adams’ priorities: road maintenance and the landfill.

From Forster: Served previously for 10 years up until about 10 years ago. Twenty-five-year resident. His priorities he recited as being basically the same as Adams’: accountability and making sure finances are correct and running smoothly.

Forster added that he would like to address the tax base and to make sure the taxes are apportioned correctly throughout the community, “shoreland versus the rest of us and
that it is done right.”

The outcome a few moments later was that Adams was elected, 65-36.

Though the incumbent summer road commissioner, Alex Sillanpaa, was reelected without opposition both planning board slots up for election featured contests in which all candidates made brief presentations and answered questions. Here, another advantage of the traditional New Vineyard system was illustrated, namely the opportunity for a candidate who loses a bid for one office to then seek another in the same meeting.

Though the losing aspirant, Patty Knapp, did not prevail in the first planning board election she came much closer in the second race than she did in the first, being on the down side of a 61-36 vote won by Chip Hinds but garnering 36 out of 85 in the second planning board election, where incumbent Cathy Kidd Hinds was retained.

Though the system most towns now use offers the advantage of allowing absentee voting, the public is often shortchanged. That’s because those voting are not guaranteed the kind of communion with the candidates offered by the traditional face-to-face question-and-answer format of the older system. The absence of a run-off procedure can also be a drawback.

Moreover, under the traditional system a credible but losing candidate for one office can then be chosen for another at the same meeting.

Overall it’s also one by which John Hancock was elected a selectman in Boston. It’s one with which both Hancock and Paul Revere would, despite the absence in their era of women’s suffrage, I think, feel right at home.