80+ Massachusetts Organizations Urge Adoption of Three Election Bill Amendments Ahead of Tuesday Vote
Ahead of Tuesday’s Senate vote, the Election Modernization Coalition and 80 Massachusetts organizations sent a letter to the Senate in support of S. 2755 and three amendments to strengthen protections for voters and elections administrators.

The groups praised the bill as “critical and significant,” but said that the bill requires three “crucial amendments.” These amendments, numbers 3, 8, and 33, would:

• ensure that the Secretary of the Commonwealth creates an effective online portal for requesting ballots,
• ensure that all ballots sent on or before election day in November are counted, and
• expand the deadline for requesting absentee ballots.

Forty-one amendments have been filed by state Senators in advance of Tuesday’s vote.

“The legislation that the Senate will be considering is very close to what the House passed last week,” said Common Cause Massachusetts Executive Director Pam Wilmot. “It is very strong and will go a long way towards making sure that every voter can safely cast a ballot in our fall elections. But we urge the Senate to adopt three amendments. With those changes, this bill will ensure that Bay Staters – who may otherwise have been prevented from casting a ballot by the coronavirus pandemic – can exercise their fundamental right to participate in our democracy.”

“From the importance of this November’s election and the true threats that COVID-19 presents to it, the stakes for our elections have never been higher. But add to that the renewed urgency that the past weeks’ protests bring to the fight to hold government accountable – it has never been more important that every eligible voter can make their voice heard. With these amendments, S. 2755 will do just that,” Wilmot said.

Full sign-on letter below.

June 11, 2020

Dear President Spilka and members of the Senate,

Last week the House passed a strong elections bill, H. 4778, to help protect voters and election workers from the coronavirus this fall. The legislation will help every voter who wants to cast a ballot from the safety of their own home to do so and will help ensure that our election system is prepared for a tsunami of mail ballots. With its swift action, the House recognized the need to move quickly to help keep voters safe and to adapt our election procedures accordingly.

The bill requires the Secretary of State to mail ballot applications to all voters for the first time. This change, along with the establishment of an online portal for requesting ballots, expanding early voting, and other reforms in the legislation, is critical and significant.

The Senate Ways and Means Committee bill, S. 2755, only made a few small changes. However, one change is problematic and the Committee did not fix two issues we had identified with the House Bill. Accordingly, we have filed three amendments that we believe are crucial, and we think will be acceptable to the House. We are reviewing other amendments and may support others, but have identified the following as our collective priorities:

· Amendment #33, Senator Comerford: Expanded deadline for requesting a ballot. The Senate bill expands the blackout period when voters can no longer request a mail ballot. While we recognize that the current deadline of only a few hours before the election is too short, the seven days proposed by the Senate Ways and Means bill is too long and puts us behind 22 other states that are more generous to voters. The House bill language strikes the right balance for the 2020 elections by requiring the receipt of ballot requests by noon of the Friday before the elections, although it inexplicably created a different deadline for 2021 and beyond. This amendment would keep the Friday deadline for elections in 2020 and going forward and thereby allow more people to cast a mail ballot.

· Amendment #8, Senator Hinds: Postmarked Ballots. Our second amendment addresses a deficit in the House and now the Senate bill regarding ballots received after Election Day. Massachusetts must ensure that ballots mailed by Election Day in November are counted, even if they arrive a few days after the polls close. Given the expected dramatic increase in the volume of mail-in ballots and a postal service that is not performing at peak capacity, extending the deadline is critical to help ensure that tens of thousands of voters are not disenfranchised. Seventeen other states, including California, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas, already follow this rule to make sure that every vote counts in all of their elections. Many other states will adopt temporary orders to do the same. For our primary election, mailed ballots will still have to be received by Election Day because of a tight deadline for printing the November election ballot. But this is an important reform for November. The problem this amendment addresses is the postmark requirement in both the House and Senate bills. Many pieces of mail, including all metered mail, do not get postmarked, so by requiring a postmark, the current bill will cause tens of thousands of ballots properly mailed and received by the deadline to remain uncounted. The amendment allows evidence other than postmarks to prove the date of mailing, which other states have been doing for many years. This amendment will help ensure that ballots with missing or illegible postmarks are not disregarded.

· Amendment #3, Senator Lesser: Online Portal. Our third amendment strengthens the bill’s language establishing an online portal so that Massachusetts voters have a safe and easy means of requesting a mail ballot. The portal will also ensure that our local election officials have less work processing paper applications. We remain very concerned about the clerks’ workload in the fall. Processing a ten- to twenty-fold increase in mail ballot applications and then processing the returned ballots has crushed election officials in other states this spring, even in relatively low-turnout elections. Massachusetts already has similar online portals including the current online voter registration system. The amendment will create an affirmative duty to create the mail-in ballot request portal and will clarify that a signature is not required to access it. Massachusetts’ other portals, such as online voter registration, use personal identifying information. Requiring a signature would be difficult if not impossible to implement. Many other states including Maine, Vermont, and New York have portals. Idaho developed one in three weeks. They do not require signatures.

Please join us in supporting these amendments to the bill so that the Commonwealth can conduct fair and accessible elections this fall without risking public health. The clock is ticking, and every week we delay is one lost for election officials to implement these important reforms.

감사합니다,

Pam Wilmot, Common Cause Massachusetts
매사추세츠 ACLU의 Rahsaan Hall
재닛 도메니츠, MASSPIRG
Cheryl Clyburn Crawford, MassVOTE
Patricia Comfort, the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts
베스 황, 매사추세츠 유권자 테이블
소피아 홀, 시민권을 위한 변호사
Chrissy Lynch, AFL-CIO
마빈 마틴, 평등을 위한 행동
베스 콘토스, 미국 교사 연합-MA
제프 클레멘츠, American Promise
타니샤 아레나, 사회 정의를 위해 일어나다
프리실라 플린트-뱅크스, 블랙 보스턴 COVID19 연합
Cheryl Clyburn Crawford, 블랙 디렉터 네트워크
Larry Banks, Black Economic Justice Institute
데이비드 라이트 목사, 보스턴 광역 흑인 목회자 연합, Inc.
스펜서 브라운과 이브 세이치크, 보스턴 민주사회주의자
Rev. David Wright, Boston Ten Point Coalition
니아 에반스, 보스턴 우지마 프로젝트
Phyllis Neufeld, 버링턴 민주당 타운 위원회
데이비드 J. 해리스, 찰스 해밀턴 휴스턴 인종 및 정의 연구소
글래디스 베가, 첼시 콜라보러티브
리사 오웬스, 시티 라이프 비다 어바나
Rev. June Cooper, 시티 미션 주식회사
Deb Fastino, Coalition for Social Justice
게일 라티모어, 코드먼 스퀘어 NDC
Alan Epstein, Criminal Justice Reform Task Force of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek
Madeline Hertz, 민주당 정책 센터
엘리자베스 헨리, 매사추세츠 환경연맹
아담 아이헨, 평등한 시민
카트리니아 쇼, 프리덤 하우스
Samuel M. Gebru, Generation Citizen 매사추세츠
Beverly Williams and Rev. Burns Stanfield, The Greater Boston Interfaith Organization
찰린 그린, 그레이터 보스턴 섹션-흑인 여성 전국 협의회
칼라 쿠퍼, 분할 불가능한 마사스 빈야드
데비 폴, Indivisible Mass Coalition
로리 베닝거, 인디비지블 아우터 케이프
나딤 마젠, 제트팩
신디 로우, 유대인 법률 및 사회 행동 연합
Aaron Agulnek, 보스턴 대도시권 유대인 커뮤니티 관계 협의회
Joyce Hackett, Lift+Every+Vote
데이비드 A. 브라이언트, MA 커뮤니티 개발 기업 협회
하비에르 구티에레스, 매디슨 파크 개발 공사
마이클 케인, HUD 세입자의 대규모 연합
Janine Carreiro, Mass Communities Action Network
토마스 캘러핸, 매사추세츠 저렴 주택 연합
캐산드라 벤사히, 매사추세츠의 독방 감금 반대
Georgia Katsoulomitis, Massachusetts Law Reform Institute
Eva A. Millona, 매사추세츠 이민자 및 난민 옹호 연합
안드레아 번스, 매사추세츠 평화 행동
셀리아 J. 블루, 매사추세츠 여성 유색인종 연합
Emily Ruddock, MASSCreative
필립 카셀, 정신 건강 법률 고문 위원회
MITvote Executive Board, MITvote
수 스완슨, Mothers Out Front
Juan M. Cofield, NAACP- New England Area Conference
타니샤 설리번, NAACP-보스턴 지부
Rebekah Gewirtz, 전국 사회복지사 협회, MA 지부
마리아 엘레나 레토나, 이웃에서 이웃으로 매사추세츠
Brian Miller, 비영리 투표
잭 베어스, 페놈
메린 버트, Planned Parenthood
존 리피트, 매사추세츠 진보 민주당
러셀 프리드먼, 미국 민주주의를 위한 진보주의자
프레드 반 듀센(Fred Van Deusen), 우리의 민주주의를 되찾으세요
필리페 잠보르리니, 로지의 장소
샤나 브라이언트, 샤나 브라이언트 컨설팅 서비스
Deb Pasternak, 시에라 클럽 매사추세츠 지부
프랜시스 무어 라페, 소행성 연구소
Anika Van Eaton, Somerville Democratic City Committee
마이클 첸, 선라이즈 무브먼트 보스턴
마크 하이다르, 하버드 로스쿨의 평등한 민주주의 프로젝트
샤하라 재구, 변화를 위한 여성 파이프라인
Claire Miller, Toxics Action Center
아지자 로빈슨-굿나잇, 변형 문화 프로젝트
Horace Small, 소수민족 지역 연합
Laura Wagner MSW, Unitarian Universalist Mass Action
조지 필즈버리, 매사추세츠 2020년 유권자 선택
이사벨 곤잘레스-웹스터, 우스터 인터페이스
Lezlie Braxton Campbell, Young Democrats of Massachusetts
YWCA 말든
조던 라담, YWCA 동남부 매사추세츠
Whitney Mooney, YWCA Cambridge

The Election Modernization Coalition is comprised of the ACLU of Massachusetts, Common Cause Massachusetts, the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, Lawyers for Civil Rights, MASSPIRG, MassVOTE, and the Massachusetts Voter Table. The Coalition’s longstanding goals include ensuring elections are accessible, participatory, accurate, and safe.

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