As the fifth anniversary of the start of the coronavirus pandemic lockdown approaches, ongoing debates about town and school district governance suggest that the seismic event is still reverberating.

Towns and school districts that had relied on traditional floor meetings, where most or all annual business such as approving a budget or electing officers was done by voters gathered in a town hall or school gym, were forced to use day-long or absentee balloting to maintain social distancing.

The higher turnout for those votes led several towns to consider switching to Australian ballot voting for the long run.

■Strafford made the change to Australian balloting for all of its town and school business in 2023, but petitioned articles on this year’s Town Meeting warning call for bringing the old floor meeting back and holding it on the Saturday before Town Meeting Day.

■Sharon voters decided not to adopt Australian balloting last year, but on Tuesday will consider moving the floor meeting to the Saturday before the first Tuesday in March.

■And in the Rivendell Interstate School District, comprising Fairlee, Orford, Vershire and West Fairlee, informal conversations about moving to Australian ballot led the School Board to amend the district’s articles of agreement to enable Australian ballot voting on the annual budget and to elect officers.

If the past few years are a guide, voters will weigh the trade-offs between an in-person meeting, a form of government dating to the earliest settlers, in which residents gather and debate the issues face to face, and keeping the polls open all day to make it easier for people to drop in and vote.

“The voters were asking for it,” and the School Board has spent over a year working on it, said Mark Avery, a Fairlee resident and chairman of the Rivendell board. “It will certainly increase the amount of voting participation.”

The district’s annual meeting takes place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 15 at Rivendell Academy in Orford. Amending the articles of agreement requires a two-thirds majority of those present, Avery said.

If approved, the changes would require the district to hold an informational meeting and then conduct ballot voting within a week to elect officers and consider the annual budget.

The pandemic was what spurred the change. When the district held ballot votes, “the amount of votes cast was tremendously higher,” Avery said.

Strafford made a similar change in 2023 at heavily attended annual meetings in the community’s fabled Town House. The town now holds an informational meeting — with lunch — two Saturdays prior to Town Meeting Day. The polls are open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Town Meeting Day, Tuesday, March 4.

Former Selectboard member Stephen Marx was among those who voted in 2023 to keep the traditional town meeting, where measures could be amended before being voted up or down. It’s an increasingly rare form of deliberate democracy, Marx said.

“I feel that it’s really important to be able to talk to your neighbors and hear what they have to say,” he said in a phone interview. “The informational meeting isn’t that.”

Marx helped get the petitioned articles to return to a floor meeting on the Strafford warning.

Toni Pippy, the current Selectboard chairwoman, was a supporter of the 2023 adoption of Australian balloting. The town moved wholesale in that direction, opting to elect officers, approve spending and decide “public questions” by ballot vote for both town and school.

“I really think we’re going to continue with Australian ballot,” she said in a phone interview.

In years past, a big turnout at Town Meeting was 150 people. But the town has a voter checklist of more than 900 and during the pandemic, meetings regularly had 500 people vote.

“If it wasn’t for COVID, we wouldn’t even have pushed to do it this way,” Pippy said.

The idea that people can’t learn about the issues without an in-person meeting, or that they can’t amend articles if they consider them alone in a voting booth aren’t valid reasons to do away with Australian balloting, Pippy said. The Selectboard and School Board hold open meetings that are recorded, so information is widely available, she said.

But a floor meeting need not be so inaccessible, Marx said. The state could enable towns to hold meetings that include people who join over the internet, much as town government meetings operate today, he said.

“For me, I’ve lived in this town for 40 years and I’ve only missed one Town Meeting,” he said. “I feel that it’s that important.”

A majority of Sharon voters appear to agree. They voted last year to keep their floor meeting rather than switch to Australian ballot.

“People said they basically liked discussing things in person and having Town Meeting,” Selectboard Chairman Kevin Gish said in a phone interview.

As part of that discussion, voters raised the question of whether the town could move its meeting to Saturday, in the hope of increasing attendance.

A survey filled out by 157 residents asked which day to hold the annual meeting, and 62 respondents chose the Saturday before Town Meeting Day, Gish said.

The Selectboard put the question on this year’s warning to let voters decide, he said.

Sharon Town Meeting is slated for 9 a.m. on Tuesday in Sharon Elementary School.

“The ironic part of this is that the people who are going to vote on this are the people who will be at the Town Meeting on Tuesday,” Gish said.

That’s true in Strafford, too, where voters filling out their ballots will be asked whether they want to do away with ballot voting. The polls will be open at the Town Clerk’s office from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

Anything’s possible: Two years ago, it was Town Meeting votes that did away with Town Meeting.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.