Wayland, MA

 

At town meeting May 15, 2021, Wayland (which has an Open Town Meeting) passed Article 16:  Home Rule Petition for Remote Participation in Town Meeting by Registered Voters of the Town of Wayland.  Once this was approved, and the Select Board filed a bill (H.4985) (website) which “made it through a number of steps in the legislative process, but was not able to make it to a vote in the House and Senate prior to the end of the legislative session”.  On January 18, 2023, the Select Board filed a new, simplified version of the bill (H.2053) (website) to allow remote participation at annual and special town meetings.  The bill was submitted 1/18/2023.  To expedite the process should the bill be approved, another article (Article 19. Reaffirm Remote Participation at Town Meeting) was voted on and passed at the Annual Town Meeting, May 1, 2023. The last update on the bill’s website as of 4/4/2023 was that a hearing was scheduled for 4/11/2023 – a year ago.  I watched the video of that hearing (20:40 in the video) – all that occurred was that the bill was summarized.  No action was taken.  According to Dave Bernstein (chair of the Electronic Voting Implementation Subcommittee of Wayland), as of March 27, 2024 “Our bill to legalize Remote Participation in Wayland’s Open Town Meeting is under consideration by the Legislature. We’re actively working to get it approved.” 

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Wayland's excellent presentation on their remote electronic voting project is here.

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