EASTHAMPTON The morning announcement may have indicated that it was school day 75, but when middle school students returned from their holiday break on Wednesday morning, many admitted that it felt more like the first day of school. And students.
The issue is nuanced, with some seeing district representation as a way to address the influence of money in elections and a chance for more direct representation, and others saying that voters did not understand the ramifications of what they were deciding in 2018.
It is more complex and expensive for most candidates to run county-wide unless they are well-financed, proponents of single-member districts have said, and if commissioners were elected only by the residents of their district, as they were in 2020, some of the influence of money in elections would be diminished.
In 1992 the county tried the single-member districts system. That experiment lasted just two years before voters ditched it and returned to a countywide format. Opponents have argued that single-member districts promote extreme localism, instead of commissioners looking out for the overall well-being of the county. They also contend that all voters casting ballots for all five commission seats gives citizens