Many voters interviewed Tuesday described this midterm election as a referendum on the Trump administration and the Republican majority in Congress. Even in Massachusetts, Democratic voters young and old said they felt compelled to head to the polls on Election Day.
“I just try to keep it blue,” said Mattias Lipp, 21, a Democratic voter from South Hadley.
Jennifer West, an Easthampton voter, was particularly passionate about voting because of the current Republican leadership in Washington, D.C. Like Lipp, she voted for Democratic leadership, including Gov. Maura Helaey and U.S. Rep. Richard Neal for the 1st Congressional District.
“We need to clean house. Get that system of checks and balances back in place,” West said.
But Republican voters were looking to enact changes of their own in predictably blue Massachusetts.
“It’s time for a change,” said Mike Fontaine of South Hadley, who voted for Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Minogue.
Fontaine found an ally in Cathy Wauczinski, chair of the Easthampton Republican Committee, who was holding signs for Republicans on the ballot, including Minogue and U.S. Senate contender John Deaton, who was running against Ed Markey.
Wauczinski was also voicing support for independent candidate Nadia Milleron, who was running against Neal, the 38-year incumbent from Springfield.
“She’s smart. She’s easy to talk to. We need some new people at all levels,” Wauczinski said about Milleron.
Affordability was another leading concern for Wauczinski. Utility and electric bills continue to skyrocket, and she said green-energy initiatives are “not effective.”
Voters around the state also had an opportunity to weigh in on the nine ballot questions, marking only the fourth time in state history that so many questions appeared on a single ballot. Many voters interviewed outside polling places Tuesday said they felt overwhelmed by the size of the two-page ballot.
“I guess the thing that’s tricky here is that a lot of these ballot initiatives, you have to do a little bit more research to understand the real impact,” said Jessica Robinson, a Democratic voter in Northampton.
John Milligan of Florence agreed.
“Too many questions. Too complicated. Hard to understand whether it’s a double entendre or not,” said the Republican voter. “I don’t know how many people would bother to reread it.”
Ballot questions big driver
Question 9, which asked voters whether to keep or repeal a sweeping 2024 overhaul of the state’s gun laws, was among the most discussed ballot questions by those interviewed.
After voting at the Munson Memorial Library in Amherst, Jon Olsen said maintaining the commonwealth’s stringent gun regulations was a top priority. As a professor, he especially worries about the dangers of gun violence on college campuses.
“We hear it in the news mostly in the high schools, but there’s nothing to prevent it from coming to universities as well,” Olsen said.
Judy Peeler, a senior resident of Applewood Retirement Community, shared his concern.
“All legal gun ownership should be just as the Constitution says, a well-regulated militia being necessary. That’s what we need: regulation,” she said. “I see a rise in the number of people who think shooting would be a solution to whatever problem they’re facing. We have to say ‘no’ to violence.”
Sarah Garner, also of Amherst, said she was alarmed to see lawn signs encouraging the loosening of the state’s gun control laws.
“I have a general belief that restricting access to guns reduces violence. It’s a simple belief: fewer guns, fewer ways to get guns,” she said.
Wauczinski was advocating for voters to say no.
“We actually have some of the toughest gun laws in the country, whereas New Hampshire has some of the more moderate gun laws, and percentage by population, New Hampshire is safer than Massachusetts,” she said. “Legal gun owners, if this continues, will be felons simply by buying guns that were legal to buy two years ago and now they’re not.”
In Amherst, Mimi Sauer had strong opinions about Question 8, saying it would be “very stupid” for the state to renege on cannabis legalization and revert to a past when marijuana was sold, bought and used “under the table.”
Lipp also supported keeping marijuana legal.
“Marijuana has to stay. I feel like that’s a good freedom to have, and it doesn’t hurt nobody. We got alcohol, why not have a little green too?”
Question 3, which called for reconfiguring state elections to dissolve the partisan primary, appealed to John Peeler as one step toward a healthier democracy.
“The primary system has tended to produce more extreme candidates,” he said.
In a firmly blue state like Massachusetts, the former political scientist said he expects that “the minor party and independent candidates would have a fairer chance at the primary. They’d be on the same level as the two major party candidates. I think it would be better, but we’re not doing away with the two-party system just by changing the primary.”
Wauczinski, however, strongly opposed the change, arguing that it would make it harder for independent and Republican candidates to advance to the general election.
Voter turnout
More than 1.1 million people had already voted in Massachusetts as of Monday morning, according to Secretary of State William Galvin, though he didn’t offer a figure for how many Bay Staters he expected to turn out in total.
There has been “a dramatic increase” in early in-person voting, Galvin said at a State House press conference, while the mail-in voting rate was about the same as it was in 2022.
In Northampton, poll workers were hard at work collecting ballots in an election that City Clerk Pamela Powers described as having the second-highest voter turnout since the pandemic.
Of the city’s approximately 22,000 registered voters, more than 5,500 had already cast early ballots, Powers explained. She said poll workers reported similar voter volumes across Northampton’s 14 polling locations midway through the day.
“We’ve had to put up extra voting booths to make sure that we don’t have people in the queue for too long — we are having a record number. I think it’s the second-highest amount of early vote ballots that we’re going to try to put through the machines tonight,” Powers said. “Polls will need to be open after 8 p.m. just to make sure that the people who are in line cast their ballots.”
Although her office had been busy, Powers was excited to see the high voter turnout across the city.
“When I’ve been out driving around, checking on the polling locations, it’s great to see people wearing their ‘I voted’ stickers,” she said. “They’re on Main Street wearing their stickers on their hats or their shirts — that’s really great to see.”
Amherst Town Clerk Amber Martin said at midday that voting was going well at the six polling locations throughout town. She observed that there hadn’t been a commotion like the one during the September primary, when a person wearing Make America Great Again clothing was initially denied access to a polling site.
Instead, Martin described a story involving assistance provided to a blind voter to ensure her ballot was filled out correctly.
The only issue before Election Day was ensuring that the numerous groups that wanted to hold bake sales remained at least 150 feet away from the polls.
About 200 poll workers were on hand to check voters in quickly, while others helped people find their correct polling places.
Of the 14,296 registered voters, 4,579 had cast ballots early. That included 1,234 votes cast during in-person early voting and 3,345 ballots received by mail. Martin’s office sent out 4,000 ballots.
Even on Election Day, 130 ballots had been returned by midday, either via drop box, postal mail or in-person drop-off.
A total of 139 electronic ballots were returned by military or overseas citizens.
Stories from the field
Mimi Sauer returned to the Applewood Retirement Community shuttle idling outside the Munson Memorial Library, boarded and adjusted the cannula under her nose. She’d requested an absentee ballot because, at 93, she wasn’t sure if she would be physically well enough to make it to the polls.
“I’m really pleased that I could. It feels good to have at least done this, and I’m hoping that the ballots across the country will be counted,” she said, insisting that seniors following her onto the shuttle show off their “I voted” stickers.
By 10:30 a.m., most of the 23 Applewood residents who’d signed up for a ride on Election Day had already made it to the library. With the exception of select ballot initiatives, seniors aboard the shuttle said their disgruntlement with the Trump administration outweighed virtually every other motivation to vote and they hoped to send a message of repudiation to the federal government.
“The current government has strayed so far from the Constitution that I feel we’ve got to show that we stand for voting as the Constitution specifies,” said Judy Peeler, whose husband, John Peeler, sat beside her on the shuttle. Both have voted in every election since 1964.
A retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, John Peeler said there is no panacea for the challenges facing American democracy, but voter participation ensures that elected representatives are at least aware of the will of the people.
“We have a problem right now because, down on the national level, we have a president who really just wants to rule. He doesn’t want to accept opposition, and that’s a problem for democracy,” John Peeler said. “I would take the view that the more popular participation, the better. The more you have competing candidates and parties that are both committed to democracy rather than committed to trying to take over, the better off you are.”
Staff writers Scott Merzbach and Anthony Cammalleri contributed to this report.
