[analyst74]

I'm not sure the first example where the town failed to buy out a bad water company supports author's argument.

The article hinted that the company was doing something malicious that on the voting day, "locals who had toiled on the issue for years noticed many newcomers", who eventually voted the idea down. It almost sound like those newcomers were brought in by the company to influence votes in its favor.

But in my experience with condo boards and other small democratic organizations, there are always a small but vocal group who tend to run the show, while the majority just carry on with their lives without paying too much attention to the local politics. That does not mean those people have no opinion on major issues, and their opinions tend to be revealed at those kind of major votes.

It sucks if you worked for years to get your ideas through, only to be voted down by the majority. But is this really a failure of democracy?

[emodendroket]

I guess the trouble, in my mind, is that these instances are often grey enough that a justification like this could come up, but there is a tendency, in aggregate, for things to break one way. For an example that is probably familiar to HN readers, consider municipal broadband.