Posts Tagged ‘voting’
Voter fatigue
You’ve got your work cut out for you this fall. It’s called voting, and you’re going to have to do it not once, but twice. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Hopefully you’ve recovered from voting in the local Special Election on July 19 and have spent the summer resting and building up your strength […]
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Tags: ballot, Ben Franklin, candidates, drivers license, early voting, election reform, elections, Humor, Mark Sardella, Opinion, primary, Registry of Motor Vehicles, students, town hall, transgender, Voter ID, voting, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield High School
Hot fun in the summertime
As of this writing, we have eight people (and counting) running for Selectman in the July 19 Special Election to fill the nine months left on former selectman Betsy Sheeran’s term. This sudden surge of interest in public service is truly a wonderful thing to behold. My only question is, where were some of these […]
Filed under: Columns & Essays, News, Opinion, Politics, Wakefield | 2 Comments
Tags: Betsy Sheeran, Board of Selectmen, candidates, election, July, Mark Sardella, Mass., Massachusetts, Phyllis Hull, Politics, selectman, special election, summer, Town Election, voting, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA, Walter Schofield
The Simple Art of Voting
Every time there’s a low-turnout local election or Town Meeting (or both, as we recently had in Wakefield) talk inevitably turns to ways to improve voter turnout and participation. On the surface, it seems like a noble idea. “How can we make voting easier?” people wonder, as if voting were a task akin to climbing […]
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Tags: apathy, elections, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, Politics, Town Meeting, vote, voting, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield MA
Voting Made Easy
Whenever the government says it is taking steps to make life easier for me, my BS detector goes off. The latest example is the Massachusetts Legislature’s effort to “reform” elections and voting. The House and Senate bills are currently in conference committee where they are negotiating a version that both branches can agree upon. The […]
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Tags: ballot, early voting, elections, MA, Mark Sardella, Massachusetts, polls, reform, registration, vote, voter, voting, Wakefield Daily Item
Keep Neighborhood Polling Places
Largely ignored in all the excitement over the margin of victory in the June 9 Special Election was the fact that the decision to build a new Galvin Middle School was made by a minority of the town’s voters. Less than one-third of those eligible weighed in with a vote. If you count only the […]
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Tags: Daily Item, election, elections, Galvin, Galvin Middle School, Galvinize, Galvinize Wakefield, Mark Sardella, polling places, Proposition 2 1/2, school, schools, tax, taxes, vote, voters, votes, voting, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Massachusetts
Catering to Apathy
Note to 89 percent of the registered voters in Wakefield, Massachusetts: There was a Town Election on April 26, 2011. Sorry you couldn’t make it. Two selectmen, two School Committee Members and an Assessor were elected. And those were just the contested races. It’s been noted that the 2011 Wakefield Town Election may have seen […]
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Tags: apathy, campaign, campaigns, candidate, candidates, Daily Item, election, elections, Item, voter, voter apathy, voter turnout, voters, voting, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Total Recall
Massachusetts town solves voter apathy problem Outraged that only 145 voters showed up at Wakefield‘s Annual Town Meeting session to vote on the town’s $67 million FY’11 operating budget, a group of local citizens has filed a petition to recall Wakefield’s remaining 16,301 registered voters.
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Tags: apathy, budget, budgets, Daily Item, election, elections, government, Mark Sardella, municipal budget, municipal government, municipalities, municipality, Open Town Meeting, recall, recall effort, recall efforts, recall election, recall petition, recall petitions, tax, taxes, town, Town Meeting, Town Meetings, towns, vote, voter, voter apathy, voters, voting, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Election Ennui
Congratulations to the voters of Wakefield, Massachusetts. One in four of you came out to vote in the recent special primary election to choose Teddy Kennedy’s successor in the US Senate. Wakefield’s 26 percent participation was nearly double the statewide turnout of 14 percent. Somewhere, the Founding Fathers must be beaming with pride. In the […]
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Tags: Alan Khazei, campaigns, candidate, candidates, conservative, conservatives, Daily Item, Democrat, Democratic, Democrats, Denocratic Party, Edward Kennedy, Edward M. Kennedy, election, elections, FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Harry Truman, Jack E. Robinson, Jack Kennedy, JFK, John F. Kennedy, left-wing, liberal, liberals, Martha Coakley, Massachusetts, Michael Capuano, Mike Capuano, moonbat, moonbats, Nancy Pelosi, political campaign, political parties, political party, Politics, primary, primary election, Republican, Republican Party, Republicans, Scott Brown, special election, Stephen Pagliuca, Steve Pagliuca, Ted Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy, United States Senate, US Senate, vote, voters, voting, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Mass, Wakefield Massachusetts
Information Pleas?
In the wake of the May 27 Referendum Election that reversed the higher-than-recommended School Department budget passed by Annual Town Meeting, we’ve been hearing that there is a lack of information available to the residents of Wakefield, Massachusetts. The most recent of those assertions came at a June 17 public input forum of the Town […]
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Tags: cable TV. Cable television, Carmen Urbonas, Daily Item, election, elections, information, Item, Laurie Hunt, local cable, Mark Sardella, municipal budget, municipal budgets, Override Mom, Override Moms, Prop 2 1/2, Proposition 2 1/2, public access television, referendum, school, school budget, School Committee, schools, Town Meeting, vote, voters, voting, Wakefield, Wakefield Daily Item, Wakefield Item, Wakefield MA, Wakefield Massachusetts, Wakefield Resident Information Group, Wakefield School Committee, Wakefield Town Meeting, WCAT, WRIG
Mark Sardella 