Weekend Buzz | VoteLight Check-In

Hello, Hive members!

I wanted to do a quick check-in to see how you’re feeling about the Buzz’s partnership with VoteLight. As a reminder, we are piloting a partnership with VoteLight where paying Hive members can use the Burlington TownVote platform to vote their choice on issues that affect the town and its residents. So far we have only created one issue with one update, and a handful of votes have been tallied, but we have plans to input more issues in the future so Burlington residents can feel more connected to the town government and see how government decisions affect us.

So—how are you feeling after one round of voting?

Do you have ideas for other issues that could be placed on the TownVote? Comments to add context to your responses above? Let me know in the comments or by replying to this email or emailing hello@burlington.buzz.

VoteLight and the Buzz are committed to ironing out bugs and making this platform something that can bridge the gap between residents and government, so if there’s something that’s not working for you, let me know and we can try to address it! If you’re loving TownVote and already seeing its potential, let me know!

A couple of things to note:

1. No one should take the current votes as indication of anything at all, for a few reasons.

   1. While it is probably a little greater than the number of people who have spoken at Building Committee meetings thus far, 63 votes is not a statistically significant segment of our population, by any stretch.

   2. Only a very small number of Burlington residents even know about this initiative, so no information can be gained from the polling data. This is just a proof of concept and not meant to be cited in any official capacity. Hopefully it will be, at a later date when participation is more representative of the town and the sample size is large enough.

2. You do need an account to vote. VoteLight and the Buzz know this is an additional step, but the signup process is very quick and intended to verify a couple of things:

   1. What municipality you live in, so you can see and vote on the appropriate issues. (No address information is saved once you’re matched with your voting district, and your personally identifiable information isn’t shared publicly.)

   2. That each person is only voting once. (As mentioned before, you can change your vote, but only the most recent vote counts.)

I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say. I also have some wider civic engagement and education plans in progress, but I can’t say anything about them quite yet. So stay tuned on that front!

See you tomorrow,

Nicci