Election officials bristle over costs of early voting

Published 5:45 pm Tuesday, November 3, 2015

BOSTON – City and town officials are chaffing over the expected costs and challenges of allowing voters to cast ballots nearly two weeks ahead of next year’s presidential election.

Beginning next year, Massachusetts joins 33 other states that authorize early voting, which aims to increase participation in state and federal elections.

The new rules, approved by the Legislature and former Gov. Deval Patrick two years ago, allows the state’s 4.3 million registered voters an opportunity to cast ballots as early as 11 business days before Election Day.

But the state hasn’t given money to communities to open polls early or hire more election workers.

“We have no idea how much this is going to cost, and I’m concerned we’ll find out too late,” said Gloucester City Clerk Linda Lowe, who oversees the city’s elections. “We don’t know if the state is going to provide funding.”

Newbury Town Clerk Leslie Haley said there is confusion among local elections officials about how and when they will be required to tabulate early votes, and also over differences in handling absentee and early ballots.

“To do early voting and absentee ballots at the same time just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” she said. “The end result of early voting is essentially the same as absentee voting. They are one and the same.”

Haley said it would be simpler to switch to “no-excuse” absentee ballots, which require no explanation for why a voter won’t be present on Election Day. State law now requires those who vote absentee in person or through the mail to provide an excuse to have their votes counted.

Good-government groups, which advocated for early voting, say they understand that elections officials face challenges adhering to the new requirements. On Thursday, a coalition of groups kicks off a campaign to raise awareness and help communities implement early voting in the next year.

“We understand this is going to take effort and resources, but the bottom line is that these election reforms are badly needed,” said Janet Domenitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group. “Early voting will make casting a ballot easier and more convenient while encouraging more voter participation.”

Secretary of State Bill Galvin, a Democrat who oversees the state’s elections, is drafting regulations that spell out where to set up early polling sites, where to get early ballots, and how to record the votes.

Galvin said his office will absorb some of the costs of early voting — such as printing ballots and other election materials — but he argues that cities and towns have an obligation to make sure everyone gets to vote.

The new law gives municipalities the flexibility to determine whether to extend voting hours on weekends, when town halls wouldn’t otherwise be open, he said.

Early voting isn’t as costly as a typical election, he noted, since communities won’t need to pay for police details or hire as many election officers.

Galvin said there will likely be technical issues to address before the Nov. 8, 2016 election, when voters elect a new president, fill state and congressional offices and determine a yet-to-be-determined number of ballot questions.

But he has “little sympathy” for complaints about the cost of implementing a new system, he said.

“We’ve been pretty generous to local governments when it comes to extended polling hours and other costs,” he said. “But the idea that a community shouldn’t have multiple sites for early voting because they didn’t get state money – or because their selectmen or aldermen were too cheap to pay for it – is unfair to the voters.”

Political observers say the success of early voting depends on whether it becomes just another unfunded mandate on cash-strapped cities and towns.

“If Massachusetts wants this to work well, they need to give town clerks the money and resources they need to make it work,” said Erin O’Brien, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Regardless of cost, she said, studies show that early voting does little to drum up new voters.

“Despite the lure of ‘souls to the polls,’ the majority of people who use early voting are those that were going to vote anyways,” O’Brien said. “It doesn’t really boost participation. It just makes it easier for people to vote.”

Christian Wade covers the Massachusetts Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at cwade@cnhi.com.