New Bill Would Revolutionize Absentee Voting as a COVID-19 Work-Around

With wary eyes on the pandemic, more than a third of the members of the legislature have signed on to a newly-filed bill that would  allow anyone and everyone who wanted to vote by absentee ballot this fall do so.

There's a lot to like about, House Docket #5075,  An Act Ensuring Safe and Participatory 2020 State Elections in Response to COVID-19.

But one of the big questions it raises is: Are we ready to wait 10 days after the election this November to know all of the results?

Before getting to that issue, let me describe three aspects of HD5075:

• It proposes to create a new definition of who'd be eligible for an absentee ballot by reason of  disability. For the purposes of the law, you'd be considered disabled if you did not want to go to a polling place for fear of catching the coronavirus.  Section 2 of the bill says "that all voters who are ill, are confined to their homes to avoid transmission of illness, or wish to avoid polling places as a precautionary measure related to COVID-19, are unable by reason of physical disability to cast their votes in person at the polling places [underlining added]."  
• Nineteen days before both the September 1, 2020, state primaries and the November 3, 2020, biennial state election, it would require Secretary of State William Galvin to mail to every registered voter "an absent voting ballot and accompanying papers."  Every voter this fall would get an absentee ballot without applying for one!  The choice to vote that way would then be up to them.
• As a COVID-19-centric measure, it applies only to the September 1, 2020, and November 3, 2020, elections.  This bill would have to be amended, or another bill would have to enacted by a subsequent legislature, to institute permanent universal access to absentee voting.

As for vote-counting, Section 6 of HD5075 stipulates that, if a voter mailed in his/her absentee ballot "not later than November 3," and if that mailed-in ballot were received by the city or town clerk in that voter's community "not later than November 13," the clerk would have to count it.

That's quite a change from the existing situation in Massachusetts.

Currently, for an absentee ballot to be counted, it must be received by the voter's local election office no later than the time the polls close on election day.  That vote is then added to, and counted among, all the ballots cast that day.

The bill was filed only five days ago, on May 5.  The lead bill sponsors in the House are Rep. John J. Lawn, Jr., D-Watertown, and Rep. Michael J. Moran, D-Boston.  The lead in the Senate is Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow. There are 60 co-sponsors of the bill in the House and 7 co-sponsors in the Senate.

An Act Ensuring Safe and Participatory 2020 State Elections in Response to COVID-19 is so new it doesn't yet have a bill number.  It has not yet been assigned to a committee or scheduled for a hearing.

That is not to say the bill is so late as to have no chance.  The COVID-19 pandemic has entirely upended our lives and changed so many of our behaviors and attitudes.  When the fall elections heave into view, voters could begin clamoring for universal access to absentee balloting.

I only hope that the legislature, if it embraces this bill, will set earlier deadlines for submission of absentee ballots so that we'll have the traditional satisfaction of knowing who's won or lost on the night of an election, or before breakfast on the morning after.