Access to polling places in Danvers has been restricted

November 6, 2014

Access to a polling place should never be in question, and in Danvers, unfortunately, it is.

I believe that even the slightest perception that voting at a single polling place is more difficult that at multiple polling places is unacceptable, even if that perception is not true. In this case, I believe that the perception is actually accurate.

Prior to 2008, when each of the eight precincts had their own polling place, there were no complaints about access or appropriateness of location. The complaints that were received had more to do with voters going to the wrong polling place and that the Town Clerk’s office had to shuttle between eight locations to settle disputes. The former Town Manager proposed a change to a single polling place and it turned out to be a disaster. As a result, I developed a proposal to move back, not to eight polling places, but to four polling places. The four locations were carefully chosen, discussed by the board, and adopted in 2010.

Residents of precincts one and two voted at the Holten-Richmond Middle School on Conant Street, precincts three and five voted at the Thorpe Elementary School on Avon Road, precincts four and six voted at the Smith Elementary School on Labao Drive, and precincts seven and eight vote at the Danvers Senior Center on Stone Street. All four locations are town owned, with adequate parking and access. This solution worked for several elections, without incident, including the Presidential election in 2012, which had an 80% turnout in Danvers.

Last year, the former Town Manager once again proposed the idea that the Town move to a single polling citing the fact the school construction project was now complete and access should be easier. The issues surrounding the bottlenecks in 2010 and this past Tuesday, had nothing to do with the school itself, but instead access to the school. I believe that even if we are successful in evenly distributing the voters to all available routes to the school, that we accomplish nothing more than moving the bottleneck from Cabot Road to the parking lot, or the school entrance, or the Vye Gym.

I expect the 2016 election to also have a large turnout and Tuesday showed that the single polling place is marginally adequate to handle a turnout of 50%. It will be woefully inadequate in 2016.

The Town Clerk’s office is asked to have enough ballots on hand so that every voter can make a mistake on a ballot and still have enough to furnish a replacement. This means that even though we have roughly 18,000 registered voters, we had 36,000 ballots on hand. This should be the same approach used in selecting polling locations. We should not be looking to set the polling locations based on “typical turnouts”, but instead base it on the total number of voters, plus some.

There were roughly 10,000 ballots cast on Tuesday. This represented 53% of the registered voters. What happens when we see 80% turnout, or 5,000 additional voters?

As a comparison to the six cities and towns that border Danvers, I collected the following -

Peabody has 35,857 registered voters and 19 polling places. This represents 1,887 per polling place.

Wenham has 2,779 registered voters and 1 polling place. This represents 2,779 per polling place.

Salem has 27,066 registered voters and 9 polling places. This represents 3,007 per polling place.

Beverly has 25,495 registered voters and 6 polling places. This represents 4,249 per polling place.

Topsfield has 4,505 registered voters and 1 polling place This represents 4,505 per polling place.

Middleton has 5,493 registered voters and 1 polling place. This represents 5,493 per polling place.

Danvers has 18,770 registered voters and 1 polling place. This represents 18,770 per polling place.

Moving Danvers back to four polling places would represent 4,693 registered voters per polling place.

The Board of Selectmen must reconsider this change back to one polling place, and please return to the four polling places used from 2010 to 2013.

You can contact them at -

Bill Clark - 978-774-0550 Email: whclarkjr@verizon.net
Gardner Trask - 978-774-1338 Email: gtraskdanvers@gt3.com
Dan Bennett - 978-774-0296 Email: daniel.c.bennett@verizon.net
Diane Langlais - 978-766-7342 Email: dilanglais@verizon.net
David Mills - 978-777-1710 Email: davidmills101@cs.com

Thank you,

Keith Lucy

7 Ashley Lane