The South Coast community of Raynham, which has 9,283 registered voters and about 13,600 residents, last night “saved” its town meeting by lowering the quorum from 200 to 50 people, according to the Taunton Gazette‘s Tim Faulkner. This means that a voter turnout of 0.54 percent will be sufficient to conduct town business.

Selectman Marie Smith proposed the change, saying: “Lowering the quorum is not to discourage people from coming to the meeting… What we’re doing is trying to preserve it.”

But as Faulkner reports from the meeting, “A handful of residents worried that reducing the quorum might lead to the end of the public town meeting, while giving more influence to interest groups.”

The saddest thing about the Gazette story is that it’s headlined “Crowd turns out for town meeting,” and the lead paragraph refers to “a near capacity crowd turned out at the Raynham Middle School auditorium.” This supposedly high turnout consisted of … 210 people. The 2 percent turnout was apparently inflated by supporters of a home-rule petition seeking a two-year delay on the implementation of a statewide ban on dog racing. The proposal to keep Raynham-Taunton Greyhound Park operating a little longer passed easily.