Mystery Solved? Email Survey Puzzles Candidates

Late last week, most or all candidates for town office in the November 2 biennial town election received an email containing a series of general biographical questions and carefully worded policy questions, as well.

The email purported to be for something called The Franklin Voters Guide. A straw poll of four candidates showed that none had heard of the Guide and all were a bit wary of participating given that many of the questions posed were “leading” – rather like something a police prosecutor might ask.

So, Franklin Observer sent a note to the email address from which the survey came asking who, what, why, etc. and quickly got a helpful response from someone identifying as Stacey:

“We are a group of Franklin residents that came together before the 2020 Primaries with the goal to help our community stay informed and facilitate participation in elections. Attached is what we published for the 2020 Primaries.

Here's our mission statement:

"Driven by a need to better understand local government and a desire to impact the decisions that affect our community, our goal is to help Franklin voters stay informed and participate in federal, state, and local elections. Organized by a group of Franklin citizens, the Franklin Voter Guide was created so that each of us can feel like every vote we cast is a meaningful one."

A little about myself, my name is Stacey and I am a resident of Franklin with a child in the Franklin school system. I found myself being complacent and not participating in local elections especially, mostly due to lack of understanding, but often dissatisfied with the direction that the town was going. I needed to be a more informed voter and the Franklin Voter Guide was a great opportunity to help people like myself get informed about upcoming elections and give every candidate a voice on a level playing field.

To summarize, we want to provide our community a centralized and easy way to know when/where to vote and help them identify candidates that will represent them best.

For the 2021 Biennial Town Election, we have emailed all candidates for each office the same survey to complete. We will publish those responses verbatim. This allows candidates to tell the community more about themselves, why they deserve a vote, and gives voters a baseline upon which they can evaluate candidates.

You can learn more about us and our past voter guides on our website: www.franklinvoterguide.org. We are in the process of updating to include current election information.

Thanks!

Stacey

OK, that certainly helped. But still the questions posed to the candidates seem a bit odd. For instance, the first question for Town Council candidates is:

Will you support putting the override on the ballot this term? If not, how do you propose addressing the fiscal challenges set out in the FY2021 budget message? https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/uploads/2020-05-27_fy_2021_budget_message_narrative_final.pdf

Well, that budget message from 2021 was grim – but we are now in the 2022 budget cycle and thanks to federal and state funding, things are looking much rosier. The current Budget Message is a far more relevant reference point: https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/uploads/2021-04-16_fy_2022_budget_message_narrative_working_document_1.pdf

Furthermore, candidates elected in November will be weighing in on FY 2023. And, we might add, the “O” word hasn’t been heard around town in a long time, so why put candidates on the spot about a non-issue?

With those caveats, the idea of the Voter Guide sound great and the idea of sharing information about candidates seems like a useful one.