'Like Getting Ready For 3 Different Elections': North Shore Votes 2022

PEABODY, MA — While early, in-person voting totals have been light across the North Shore, mail-in voting remains in heavy demand, as city and town clerks deal with the challenges of a new general election voting landscape in Massachusetts.

Voting has gone from a one-day marathon of early morning poll arrival and late-night result reporting for clerk's offices to more than a month of mailing out mail-in ballots, manning early voting poll locations for two weeks, and then putting it all together when the polls open for 13 hours on Election Day.

"It's almost like getting ready for three different elections," Peabody City Clerk Allyson Danforth told Patch during the first full week of early, in-person voting on Wednesday. "You have early voting that requires equipment for voting and the whole nine yards, then you have mail-in voting that includes sending them all out and collecting them, then you have your Election Day.

"It's a lot of work. I am not really sure if anyone took into consideration how much work it is for the clerks' offices. We have three staff members who are 65 or older and it's a lot to have them working without a day off for two straight weeks.

"We do the best we can. I am sure a lot of other people have less staff and it's harder on them."

The effort is required as part of the state law passed this summer making no-excuse, mail-in voting and early, in-person voting permanent in Massachusetts. The measures were widely introduced as part of voting in 2020 amid the COVID-19 outbreak. While each city and town can tweak its in-person voting hours a bit based on population and municipal business hours, they are all required to be available between 11 and 14 days for a certain number of hours leading up to the actual election day.

So far, both Danforth and Beverly City Clerk Lisa Kent said the mail-in voting has been going strong, but the early in-person voting numbers are well off what they were in 2020 and 2021.

Kent told Patch that Beverly had 306 residents vote early since the polls opened on Saturday as of Wednesday morning — including 27 so far that day. In 2020, she said Beverly had 345 people vote early, in person on the first day alone, 2,659 in the first week and 2,545 in the second week, for a total of 5,204.

Danforth said that she had 270 early, in-person voters as of Wednesday, which is also well off 2020, but also ahead of the September primary when they were 300 votes cast in person altogether ahead of Election Day.

"The preference now seems to be vote-by-mail and that seems to be going very well," she said.

As of Oct. 19, she said Peabody had 8,582 ballots requested, had sent out 8,511 of them and had received back 951.

"I am sure we have gotten about 2,000 ballots in over the last week," she added. "I feel people are more comfortable with the mail this time around. In 2020, our ballot drop box was inundated."

Danforth said one thing helping her and other clerks navigate the new extended voting season has been the return of older poll workers who did not feel comfortable working amid the coronavirus health crisis in 2020 and 2021. She added that Peabody increased its poll worker pay, along with many other North Shore cities and towns, this year.

"Most workers have come back," she said. "We do get a lot of people coming into our office offering to help and organizers coming our way to send people. So we have been lucky there."

Those who intend to vote early have until Nov. 2 to request a vote-by-mail ballot, which must be returned by 8 p.m. on election night. The last day to register to vote for the upcoming election is Saturday.

Voters are also reminded that they must sign the envelope before returning their mail-in ballot.

"We are rejecting a lot of envelopes because people aren't signing," Danforth noted.

While those who have had ballots rejected well ahead of Nov. 8 will be notified of the rejection and sent a new ballot, there will not be time for those who wait until Election Day itself to get a second chance to get it right.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)