In an effort to encourage town clerks to extend hours for early voting just ahead of the Nov. 8 Election Day, Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin has announced grants of $250 to $1,500 to help municipalities open their polling places for the last weekend in October.
The November election will mark the first time Massachusetts voters are able to cast ballots in person before Election Day, after an elections law reform passed in 2014 authorized early voting.
Every city and town will be required to offer early voting in at least one location during business hours from Oct. 24 to Nov. 4.
Early voting supporters see it as a way to expand access to the ballot, describing evening and weekend hours as crucial to accommodating voters who work, lack child care or face other obstacles in getting to the polls during traditional business hours. Some municipal officials have bristled at the expected extra cost while others have said additional wages for poll staff can be easily covered.
Regulations from Galvin’s office give communities discretion as to whether they choose to offer early voting in evenings or on weekends. The 11-day early voting period includes one weekend, Saturday, Oct. 29, and Sunday, Oct. 30.
“With this first experience with early voting in Massachusetts, it is important that voters have the option of casting their ballot on the weekend,” Galvin said in a statement announcing the grant program. “I encourage cities and towns to take advantage of these grants to make it possible for their voters to do so.”
Greenfield will offer special Saturday hours on Oct. 29, as well as a chance for the town’s 11,500 voters to cast early votes from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. during that entire week, according to Town Clerk Deborah Tuttle.
On Election Day, polling places are required to be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Greenfield has about 700 absentee ballots cast before the election, and Tuttle said it’s hard to know how many early ballots will be cast this year.
She, like other town clerks, said the state also hasn’t made it absolutely clear whether the grant applications will be competitive, or if each of the towns will receive funding – although Brian McNiff of the Secretary of State’s Elections Division said the state has allocated $400,000 to help in “giving towns a little push to do it on those (weekend) days.
Under the program, towns with fewer than 5,000 voters can get $250 to be open at least three weekend hours. For those with 5,000 to 10,000 voters, they can get $500 to be open at least four weekend hours, with a $50 bonus for each additional two-hour increment. And towns with 10,000 to 20,000 voters can get $1,000 for at least four weekend hours, with a $100 bonus for each additional two hours.
For very small towns, even the lure of grants may not be enough to persuade clerks to extend hours to weekends, since it’s unknown how many people would show up to cast ballots.
Shutesbury Town Clerk Susie Mosher says that regular clerk’s hours, 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Tuesday through Friday, as well as Mondays 3:30 to 6 p.m. and Thursdays 6 to 8 p.m. may offer enough possibilities for the town’s 1,400 voters.
“My general feeling is that my open hours allow people to come at a variety of times that probably meet the needs of people,” she said. “We’re a small town, and there are rarely any lines for people to use the voting booths. A lot of people enjoy the community experience of coming in to vote on voting day. There’s not a lot of places in town for people to intersect.”
According to a survey conducted earlier this summer by the Massachusetts Election Modernization Coalition, at least 83 communities are likely to hold weekend early voting hours. Though not all municipalities reported that they had started planning for early voting, the survey found that at least 13 cities and towns plan to offer early voting at multiple locations and 175 are likely to have evening hours.
At a press conference earlier this month announcing the survey results, Common Cause Massachusetts Executive Director Pam Wilmot said that communities have significant flexibility in how they staff the polling sites and that paying election workers makes up the bulk of the cost for implementing early voting.
“Smaller communities can have just their regular staff – their clerk, the people that are working in the office – handle it,” she said. “With multiple sites, you need more staffing, but it does not need to be the full complement of poll workers that you would have to have by law in an election. It’s very flexible. You can have whatever staffing is needed. Communities have gone everywhere from appropriating almost no money for it to quite a bit.”