It was great day for election modernization and voting rights in Massachusetts yesterday. By a vote of 37 to 1, the Senate passed a comprehensive election modernization bill (S.1975) that included online voter registration and early voting (passed in the House version late last year) as well as pre-registration, Election Day Registration, post-election audits, and permanent registration. These reforms will go a long way in expanding voter access, increasing voter participation and ensuring accurate election results.
This is the result of many years of advocacy from both organizations and legislators. Huge shout out to the Election Modernization Coalition led by ACLU Massachusetts, Common Cause Massachusetts, League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, MASSPIRG, MassVOTE, MA Voter Table, Progressive Massachusetts, and the MIRA Coalition. VThe coalition released this statement on the vote last night, click here.
Also huge shout outs to the legislative champions: the original bill sponsor and Senate Chairman of Election Laws Senator Barry Finegold; Senators Cynthia Creem, Jamie Eldridge and Anthony Petrucelli for filing Election Day registration amendments; Senator Petrucelli for filing the post-election audits amendment; Senator Sal DiDomenico for advocacy on pre-registration; Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz for filing the permanent voter registration amendment; and the 37 Senators who voted for final passage.
Massachusetts has been behind the curve, but these reforms would make us a national leader in ensuring free, fair and accessible elections.
The bill now moves back to House where it can either be accepted in full or rejected and sent to conference committee to iron out differences between the Senate and House versions. Stay tuned! You can follow updates and developments on Twitter at #UpdateTheVoteMA.
The passage of this bill by the state senate is terrific. It’s a bit too early for a victory lap, however.
But, the House side is a problem. The bill passed by the House is nowhere near as progressive. I fear that the bill will be watered down in conference committee.
It’s critically important that the final legislation include post-election audits. We’ve all worked very hard on elections, and we need to know that the vote counting machinery is working correctly. After all, there is somebody who runs around the state and randomly checks to make sure that gas pumps are accurate. So, there should be random audits of the voting machines to make sure that they are counting the votes correctly.
Will the final bill be more House-like or more like the Senate bill? Frankly, it’s all an improvement; the question is whether or not this bill is incremental progress or the last push on election reform for a while.
While it’s all important, I think the post-election audit and same-day registration are the most critical components of the senate bill not in the house bill. The audits are important both to ensure that our elections are secure and to be one more state demonstrating to others that it can and should be done. The same-day is critical because voter eligibility shouldn’t be a matter of doing your homework 19 days ahead of time. In Massachusetts we have elections in September and November and a housing population that tends to revolve around Sep 1 leases [at least near universities] and a whole bunch of kids who move into a new place in early September, be it on or off campus. Allowing them to participate in our elections is both good small-d democracy and good for Democrats.
Some resistance is coming from the town clerks, who have to administer the elections. Of course, I understand that nobody wants to be audited. I also understand that the town clerks are poorly funded, and we are asking them to do more.
You are right, same day registration is a very big deal, also.
With opposition from the “Prince of Darkness”, it’s hard to predict what might happen.
has gotten resistance to be sure. And, I get it — it will make an already stressful and long day moreso. But, other states have managed to get it done, and we should too.
that the main resistance is coming because of a fear of unpredictability in low-turnout primary contests. Most people don’t even start paying attention to these until a couple weeks before the vote and incumbents like that people can’t then remember that they need to update their registrations.
I’d imagine it’s even more extreme near college campuses. Currently, it’s nearly impossible for college kids to vote in primaries — or even lots of non-college young people. Near college campuses leases start September 1. The 2012 primary was September 6. All of those people who moved on September 1 were shut out from voting in the primary. Now, they could vote.
Two things are especially scary about that for some folks:
1. They’re largely unreachable. Campaigns haven’t been able to ID them, track them, or even know of their existence since they just moved in September 1 — possibly from next door, but maybe not.
2. Some fly by night Pied Piper shows up and marches 100s of college kids to the primary polls and swings an election, knocking out the (almost certainly Democratic) incumbent.
For my money, I think it’s about small ‘d’ democracy. You live in the district, you’re 18 and a US citizen, you should get to vote in that election. Period. Yes, that means that elections might be a little unpredictable. It also means that if you’re a Democrat [or Republican(!)] running in a district with college kids, you need to reach out to that community, either through the Young D/R College group, or some other way. Ignore them at your own peril.
Election Day registration is not the logistical nightmare some believe it to be. I’ve talked to plenty of poll wardens who are busy filling out provisional ballots all day because of voter registration issues on Election Day. Election Day registration will mean a huge decrease in provisional ballots. It also alleviates the surge of registration cards cities and towns receive leading up to the current registration deadline.
In Wisconsin, a state that has had Election Day registration for years, the clerks are openly opposed to the Governor’s attempts to get ride of it.