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Board of Registrars
December 19, 2013 Meeting Minutes (draft)
- Meeting was called to order at 9:10AM
- Attendees: Claire Golding, Ann Littlefield, Rosemary Fudeman, Lynne Grettum
- Minutes for the April 16, 2013 were unanimously approved.
- Discussion of House Bill 3772 - The bill was passed by the MA House of Representatives. Lynne explained the components of the bill which include Early Voting, Training, Online Registration, Online Portal to check registration, and Election Task Force.
- Early voting requires Town Clerk’s, during normal business hours, to conduct voting starting the eleventh day prior to an election. Lynne explained that while the bill allows the voting to be done in the Clerk’s office there is a requirement within the bill to adhere to sections of the MA General Election Law that would physically prohibit using the Clerk’s office for Voting. Example, sections 24 and 25 of election law require a polling place to have a certain number of voting booths for each 75 voters. Adhering to this requirement would prohibit voting in the Clerk’s office due to space limitations. There is also a section of the bill that allows cities and towns to expand early voting beyond normal business hours. The general consensus on this issue was that this would be unfair to
voters in a town where the hours were not expanded while a neighboring community has expanded hours. Early voting would be started with the Presidential cycle. Lynne said that while the MA Town Clerk’s association supported this bill there were implementation issues to work through, and hopefully when the Senate takes up the bill that will happen. Claire offered that the State may be reacting to polls that show that Massachusetts does little to encourage residents to vote according to polls taken. We agreed that early voting was a good change, but that there were implementation issues to be worked out.
- Training – The Town Clerk and one representative from the Board of Registrars will have to attend election training annually.
- Online registration- Today residents can register to vote at the RMA, but this would expand online registration.
- Online Portal – This would allow residents to check their registration status online.
- Elections Task Force – Would include representatives from the Town Clerk’s Association
- Lynne distributed the Town Election calendar. The Town Election will be May 12th, and the cycle starts with the Citizens’ Caucus on March 12th, nomination papers will be available also for those that choose not to go to the Caucus. Anne suggested that if Lynne had to be out of the office on the last day to submit nomination papers that one of the Board of Registrars would cover the office.
- State Elections – Primary will be held one week early on September 9th to allow enough time for Absentee Ballot mailing. State Election would be held on November 4th.
- Petitions – There are 16 ballot question petitions being circulated. 3 of those are changes to the state constitution that would be on the Nov. 2016 ballot, the remaining 13 are target to the Nov 2014 ballot. Lynne certified a total of 429 signatures on 8 petitions on behalf of the Board of Registrars. There will be another round of signature gathering in the spring.
- Voter Project Status – The last time new voter letters were sent out was for the Junes 25th, 2013 Special State Election. Lynne pulled a list of residents that would be 18 by the Town election; there are currently 40 residents on that list. We agreed to send out letters in early March to those residents. Claire will have a revised letter ready by February 10th. Anne and Rosemary will pull the mailing together and Lynne will mail. Early next summer we’ll do more letters for the next two State Elections.
- The next meeting of the Registrars will be April 1st at 9AM.
Respectfully Submitted
Lynne Grettum, Clerk
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