The Municipal Technology Committee presented a short report at the start of the Southborough annual town meeting and invited residents with technology and IT experience to volunteer with the panel.

The session quickly moved from the committee’s work to a detailed public discussion about the municipality’s new electronic voting clickers after the town clerk and moderator used the devices for trial votes and then in several live votes during the meeting.

Committee chair Matthew Propst, who introduced the municipal tech update, said the committee has been working with the town information-technology staff on “improving networking, hardware and software, and improving training support among the various different departments.” He also said the committee had reviewed the voting hardware and “we did indeed actually look at this. We actually … reviewed, read the manuals, looked into which Wi‑Fi signals are being used in here, which channels can be are available, verify that many other towns are using these clickers, verify the security certifications … So, yes, we have looked at these. These things are secure and the municipal technology committee is in favor of it.”

Town Clerk Jim Hegarty explained the check‑in and distribution process for the clickers and defended the vendor testing and controls, saying the devices were logged to check‑in slips and handled by multiple staff. “Each one of you was checked in, you were given a slip of paper and that was brought over to a table where 2 different people took that one slip of paper, wrote the clicker number in the back of it and then 2 different people observed you giving 1 clicker,” Hegarty said.

Despite committee and clerk assurances, residents at microphones raised concerns about testing, transparency and reliability after earlier unsuccessful trials. Will Warren, who held budget line 154 for questioning, said he reviewed municipal tech minutes and had not seen reference to the clicker procurement and asked why the tech committee had not certified them earlier. Other speakers — including longtime town meeting attendees — urged clearer public documentation and an extended vote window to avoid dropped or late click responses. One resident urged additional testing with longer open vote windows to account for the number of devices in the room.

Moderator Paul Cimino said the devices would continue to be used selectively at town meeting and asked the clerk and vendor to leave further testing windows open longer when the hall used the clickers. The clerk and vendor acknowledged a timing issue when a large number of votes came in simultaneously and said they would lengthen windows for any future votes to reduce miscounts. Cimino told the hall he would not re‑open or re‑count a completed vote simply because some devices did not show an “OK” indicator, but he authorized additional spot checks and a vendor test when issues were reported.

Why this matters: The town’s move to electronic voting is intended to speed votes and reduce the time needed to take complex counts at large town meetings. Town officials framed the devices as a tool for close votes, but residents pressed for public confidence in a system that distributes hardware to hundreds of voters and resolves ties or tight margins.

What’s next: Town officials said they will lengthen vote windows, document devices distributed and returned more visibly, and the Municipal Technology Committee said it will add the devices to its minutes and record of committee reviews so future voters can see the technical checks that preceded wider use.