Salem Has Smooth Day Amid Busy New Voting Landscape

SALEM, MA — In a typical state primary Salem City Clerk Ilene Simons said her office will process between 100 and 300 absentee ballots.

For this week's state primary — the first since the Massachusetts voters were able to vote with excuse-free mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus health crisis — Salem processed 8.946 mail-in ballot applications.

"It is difficult to say if the requests were more than what we expected since this was the first time the state mailed applications to every voter," Simons told Patch. "However, my staff and I were prepared to receive a large volume."

Simons said most of the Salem voters requesting ballots did so soon after receiving applications, allowing her office to mail out the majority of the ballots starting Aug. 10.

"Most ballots were sent back fairly quickly and a steady stream of them continued to be received," she said. "A good number of them came in on Monday."

One stressful aspect about the ballots left in drop boxes for clerks around the state was the amount of ballots that were left in the final hour before polls closed on Tuesday. In Salem, the ballots received earlier in the day were processed at the clerk's office and brought to wards and precincts before 8 for tabulation. Ballots in the drop box at 8 p.m. were tabulated at the clerk's office.

At the polls, Simons echoed reports from neighboring cities and towns that coronavirus-related social distance guidelines were in place and that voters were respectful in following them.

"We had (personal protection equipment) workers, including masks, gloves, individual-sized hand sanitizers and extra masks and gloves for voters in need," Simons said. "Any voter unable to wear a mask we had an area for them to cast their ballot."

Poll workers wiped down a tray of pens throughout the day, were behind Plexiglas and face shields were made available for workers who wanted to wear them in addition to masks.

A lot bottle of sanitizer was stationed at the ballot box for voters to use after they were finished.

"Overall, I believe those who wanted to go to the polls to vote on election day were prepared with the correct facial coverings and physical distancing, and so were we," Simons said. "I saw voters being very respectful to each other in line."

(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.)

Related Patch Coverage: 2020 U.S. Senate Race: Ed Markey Defeats Joe Kennedy In Primary
'Flood' Of Last-Minute Ballots Fill Peabody Voting Drop Boxes
MA Mail-In Voting Has Huge Turnout, Few Issues Despite Worries