Chichester sees surge in voter turnout as town aims for more civil politics

As voting unfolded on Tuesday in Chichester, Ewen McKinnon saw people standing outside Grange Hall hugging, chatting and picketing for candidates while the sun beat down with unseasonable warmth.

The past year has been characterized by tension in town politics, but Election Day, which saw record voter turnout, offered hope of turning over a new leaf.

“I’m jokingly saying it was like a mini Old Home Day,” said McKinnon, who has served as Town Moderator for 11 years.

Chichester usually only sees 350 to 400 residents turn up for municipal elections, he said. This year, 760 voters cast ballots.

“I believe the highest I recall was around 430, but we had four contested races. There was a lot of door-to-door campaigning, a lot of people all over the place,” he said.

From the moment the polls opened, the Grange grew “extremely busy, but it was fun,” per McKinnon. At one point, so many people showed up to vote that the parking lot ran out of spots, so he had to go outside to help people find spaces.

“We did not have one minute where there wasn’t someone with the ballot clerks, voting, or turning the ballots in,” he said.

The two most heated races were for the three-year selectman seat and the one-year selectman seat. Jeremy Letendre won the former, and Carrianne Wood carried the latter. They will join Matt Stolnis on the Board of Selectmen.

In the other two contested races, Robyn LeBreton won as town treasurer, and Kristen Saturley secured the role of school treasurer.

Wood said she has always encouraged others to vote even if their views don’t align with hers.

“That’s the only way democracy will work,” she said. “People need to go, show up, vote. And that’s the people speaking. I think people have heard that over the past year, of like, ‘I need to show up to make change.’ And I think this is what happened in the community.”

Candidates congratulated each other and thanked everyone for running in a series of social media posts on Tuesday night. Chichester’s online community forums have featured more friction than friendliness in recent months, but the show of support and pride at high voter turnout illustrated the more positive tone residents have been trying to take of late.

Wood said she wants to take a constructive approach to being selectman and encouraged residents to chat with her throughout her term.

“I want to hear their ideas. I want to hear their concerns about things going on and things going well. And if they have a concern, what is their idea to fix it? How do they see it moving forward?” she said.

Wood belongs to a group called the Chichester Alliance for Responsible Ethics, or CAREs, formed recently to spread kindness and civility around town.

She has a few ideas for how to bring these values into municipal meetings, where raised voices and pointed fingers have been common in recent months. One idea she hopes to implement is to establish meeting etiquette.

“We have to decide that together, to make it more civil during those meetings, and to have a clear way of running it and repercussions if people step outside those bounds,” she said. “Just make it so it’s fair — we want to hear the people — but we also need to be able to get work done without being yelled at and interrupted while we’re talking through what we’re trying to figure out.”

Chichester’s annual town meeting will take place on Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Chichester Central School.

Last year, budget discussions grew so heated that the meeting had to be continued into April. McKinnon is hopeful this year will be different, although he still anticipates the meeting continuing for several hours.

“I think it’s going to be much less contentious,” he said.

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