I went to Town Meeting last week. I’ll be blunt: it was miserable.

A democracy requires several characteristics to function well. Thursday night’s Town Meeting did not have any of them.

The first characteristic of a healthy democracy, and the most vital, is voter participation. Without participation by a significant percentage of the populace, the best interests of the people will not be promoted.

Thursday’s Town Meeting had a miniscule voter turnout. According to the town, just under 9,000 citizens are eligible to vote; 305 citizens participated on Thursday, a 3.3% turnout rate.

That is utterly appalling.

Ten times that number of Waylanders participated in Tuesday’s town and state elections. 91% of eligible Wayland voters participated in the 2008 presidential election.

Following citizen participation, a democracy needs educated citizens, so that when they do participate, they can make informed decisions.

Many of the voters at Town Meeting, I’m afraid to say, did not exhibit this quality during one of the most important votes of the night. During the vote on item 13 of the capital budget, Network Meters Reading System, several speakers played off of fears that had almost no basis in reality.

The line-item would have allocated $625,000 for the development of an electronic water meter reading system to be used throughout town. According to the director of the Department of Public Works (DPW), the cost would have been more than recuperated by making the town more water-efficient and eliminating the need for manual inspections.

This was not enough to convince voters. Due to speeches given by several fear mongers, the item was removed from the budget. Why? Fear of radiation.

Despite expert testimony to the contrary, it appears that the majority of voters believed that four one-second bursts of electromagnetic radiation each day would have caused health complications for Wayland residents. Sure, it could – if the electronic signals that would have been sent out by the water meter readers constituted of ultraviolet rays, x-rays or gamma rays.

But they wouldn’t have been. The signal sent out would have been a low, safe frequency – as the director of the DPW clearly explained. The meter readers would have been 6,000 times safer than your cellphone.

Finally, a strong democracy must be structurally sound and efficient. Thursday’s Town Meeting was anything but efficient. After more than four hours of debate, not even five articles were finished, out of a total of nearly 30 articles.

These issues should be addressed to maintain the integrity of Wayland’s centuries-old democracy.

The majority of these issues fall on the shoulders of the people themselves. It is the responsibility of an American citizen to participate in our democracy and to be educated about the issues facing it, just the same as it is a responsibility to pay taxes.

Making Town Meeting more efficient is a thornier problem. However, this year, an article has been proposed that would strengthen Town Meeting: Article 22. The article, introduced by Alan Reiss, would bring electronic voting to Town Meeting, speeding up the event as well as protecting the privacy of voters.

Participation, education, and efficiency. Democracy requires these qualities to succeed. However, despite these sometimes burdensome requirements, democracy is the best hope for any society.

Perhaps Winston Churchill put it best: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried.”