About Us

Merrimack Votes - About Us

Who We Are

merrimackvotes.org was founded in 2007 by a group of residents who realized that the election process within the Town may be unfamiliar to residents.

The School District, Town and Villiage District have protocols, procedures and state RSA's that must be followed. It is important for the voters to educate themselves on these in order to cast an informed vote.

That is where merrimackvotes.org comes in.

Our goals are:

Educate residents about the community's government structure
Educate residents about the budget processs for Town , School and Village District
Provide accurate information to the residents on the budgets, community issues and candidates
Identify ways to get involved to ensure that the governing bodies conduct business in the manner you desire
Encourage our residents to exercise their voting rights at both the deliberative sessions and the polls

And finally, merrimackvotes.org does not endorse specific candidates or articles.

Who I am

My name is Brian McCarthy. And in 2008, I was elected to the Merrimack Town Council. I host, maintain, and update the MerrimackVotes.org website.

With the initial coming together of MerrimackVotes in 2007, I developed this website in an effort to bring forth the above goals.

When ever any questions relating to controversial decisions for this website, the original founders are consulted prior to moving forward.

The biggest example of controversy is when a candidate's response contains inaccurate information. The big question comes, inaccurate according to whom? So, the responses stay, intact, as sent, with only grammatical corrections made.

That battle was back in 2007. 2008 was pretty smooth.

When it comes to information about articles, the source is the governing body. So, for Town articles, the Town owns the data. Debates can be held on other boards/locations.

$page->NewBlock('2010 Update'); ?> If you've read this far, you are curious as to what is going on for 2010, and because of my home life and duties at Town Councilor, this site has taken at least a third place in where I allocate my time. It was not until after the sign-up period that information was put out there. Comparing changes beteween deliberative session and ballot versions was of little use because the information was not out there prior to the sessions. I'm sorry for that.

Each year I make changes to the scripts that run this site to make it easier, and I hope next year it will be even faster in getting the information out to the voters.

And the 'Founders', have, for the most part, backed off from the site. If you're out there and your a founder, shoot me an email.