“The biggest thing is to get us your ballot well before the deadline.”
By Heather Beasley Doyle
Two years ago, as the midterm elections approached, 85% of registered voters in the United States thought voting would be easy, according to a Pew Research Center poll. By the time the center polled with the same question this August, sentiment had changed significantly: While 50% of registered voters said it would be very easy or somewhat easy for them to vote in upcoming elections, 49% expected “to have difficulties casting a ballot.”
With November 3rd, Election Day, fast approaching, Lexington Town Clerk Nathalie Rice is familiar with this concern. Her office has fielded hundreds of calls and emails from concerned residents over the past weeks. But with the September primary behind Rice, her staff, and their corps of election workers, the town clerk feels well prepared to handle the demands leading up to, on, and following the November 3rd election.
Of the town’s 22,529 registered voters, 11,581 voted in the September primary. And of those, roughly 3,000 voted in person. The rest voted by mail. Preparations for the first pandemic-time election in recent history included urging people to vote early by mail and implementing protocols to help prevent the coronavirus from spreading at the polls. Through it all, Rice and her team took notes on how to refine their new processes for the general election.
“I think the benefit of the primary, is this is our dry run for the presidential. And it was a very effective dry run,” Rice told the Colonial Times in late September.
“Now we know what to expect, and there’s a lot of power in that, and there’s a lot of understanding that we now have. And I think we are much better positioned for the November election having understood and done well in the primary election.”
That understanding could help as Lexington voters flood the town clerk’s office with questions. According to Rice, people most frequently ask when they will get their mail-in or absentee ballot. Residents’ second most common question is if they can vote in person if they’ve already applied for an early vote-by-mail ballot.
Rice mailed out more than 14,000 absentee and early mail-in ballots for the presidential election in early October, with additional residents likely planning to vote in person. Ballots arrived at the town clerk’s office on October 2nd. The town subsequently sent these to registered voters who’ve applied for a mail-in or absentee ballot; they should have received them in their mailboxes by October 13th. Knowing that many voters worry that their filled-out ballots won’t reach the town clerk’s office in time to be counted, Rice encourages Lexingtonians to drop their ballots in the town clerk’s depository near the town building. “It’s blue with yellow lettering and it has the town seal on it,” she said. “So we’re asking people to put their voted ballots and applications there. That way it bypasses the postal service—I’m not trying to make judgments about the postal service, but we get the ballot that day. We can get it processed sooner, we can get it ready for central tabulation sooner, and we can let the voter know, because we check it in.”
Whether a voter mails their ballot, drops it in the depository, or takes it to the town clerk’s office, Rice has one critical suggestion: “The biggest thing is to get us your ballot well before the deadline.”
At the same time, she praised Lexington’s post office for its proactive approach to this fall’s elections. “The post office is being very responsive; we have been very pleased with their service,” she said. Ballots and applications mailed from Lexington are likely to reach the town clerk’s office within a day or two. Rice suggested that voters wanting more clarity on the status of their mail-in ballot application and ballot can see the status of their voter registration, or ballot via the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Track My Ballot page. (https://www.sec.state.ma.us/wheredoivotema/track/trackmyballot.aspx)
With the state’s COVID-19 cases again on the rise, Rice encourages people to vote by mail rather than in person. “COVID is an overriding concern in the town and in the state, and I think we need to be really smart about how we vote. And we’re encouraging people to vote by mail,” Rice said.
Rice acknowledged that many people are considering voting in person, and voting in person early or on Election Day remains an option, with the same protocols used during the state primary in September (see sidebar). And to answer Lexingtonians’ second-most common question: Registered voters who have already requested a mail-in or absentee ballot can vote in person—but only if the town clerk’s office hasn’t yet accepted their ballot.
Once the town clerk’s office receives a voter’s mail-in ballot, that voter can no longer vote in person. But if a voter receives their mail-in ballot, doesn’t send it to the town clerk’s office, and decides to vote in person, “It’s not simply like, ‘Oh, gee, I’m just going to go vote,'” Rice said. The precinct warden must authorize a voter with an unreturned absentee or mail-in ballot to vote at their polling place; the voter’s mail-in ballot must be rejected by someone on the town clerk’s staff via a phone call. And the warden then explains to the election worker at the check-in table that the voter is now authorized to vote.
Noting that some people are worried about voters casting two ballots, Rice said: “Double voting is not possible, because there’s no voter who would be checked in,” if they’re listed on election rolls as having early mail-in or absentee ballots. “They’re always stopped, and they’re asked to go to the warden to authorize, to enable them to reject that previous ballot and vote.”
This year, Lexington will employ the same voting tabulators they have used for the past several years. No new technology will be introduced.
Rice explained that the electronic voting tabulators at each polling place print out the results after the polls have closed at 8:00 p.m. “It produces a paper tape. There’s no wi-fi connection back to our office,” she explained; election workers take the paper tapes to the town clerk’s office by hand. “We don’t enter anything that comes to us electronically through wi-fi or any other means. We take that tape, we enter that tape data in our spreadsheet, and then, subsequently, during the night, we check that again to make sure it’s accurate. …There is no opportunity for corruption at any electronic level.”
Rice and her staff will begin tabulating ballots mailed in ahead of Election Day starting Sunday, October 25th. Those that haven’t yet been run through the tabulating machines by November 3rd will be counted on Election Day (this is called central tabulation). The process necessitates 19 memory cards, two per precinct plus a spare, to save the results until after the polls close on election night and the tapes are run.
Thinking ahead to the presidential election, Rice reflected on a particular primary election success that she hopes will carry over: “One of the things I’m really proud of is that…We did not have one case of COVID in a voter, in any of my election workers, and I’m really proud of that,” she said. Her office’s job is “protecting a really important right, to vote, amidst a set of… scientific challenges that make that process more difficult.” She credited state officials with making mail-in and early voting particularly easy this election cycle.
The upcoming presidential election has presented an unprecedented number of challenges for town officials and election workers around the country. As Lexingtonians prepare to cast their votes, Lexington’s Town Clerk Nathalie Rice is confident that voting will proceed smoothly. She and her colleagues have worked diligently to protect the process—both the integrity of the process and the health of voters, workers, and volunteers.
“You just have to separate yourself from some of the background noise and do your job. And I think all of us feel that way; we never talk about politics in our office,” Rice said. “We come in, and we do our job. And that’s what everyone expects of us. You know, we’re not filled with a lot of hoopla; we just work. We work hard.”
