As a follow-up to the December 5th article Non-citizen Voting Rights Petitions in Massachusetts, Citizens for Truth searched online to find the outcome of the December 3rd Shutesbury Special Town Meeting, at which they were to decide whether to allow non-citizens to vote in their local elections.
Below is an excerpt of the Special Town Meeting warrant:
The vote results were unavailable online, which is unsurprising given the town’s small size and location in the rural woods of western Massachusetts.
Eager to learn the outcome, CFT sent a Public Records Request to the Shutesbury Town Clerk at 12:55 pm on December 6th.
The town clerk responded within the hour.
Indeed, Town Clerks or Records Access Officers are not required to create documents to answer Public Records Requests. They are only responsible for providing records that already exist.
Over the next few days, CFT monitored the Shutesbury town website for the Special Meeting minutes to be posted or for the Article 7 results to be announced elsewhere on the site. CFT scoured the internet looking for the answer, only to come up empty. Finally, on December 9th, CFT again emailed the Shutesbury Town Clerk, asking for the outcome of the Article 7 vote.
As of the publishing of this article, CFT has yet to receive a response.
Perhaps she’s on vacation.
by Citizens for Truth
Massachusetts First 
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