It’s time to choose.
Voting is now underway in the state primaries, with more ballots en route after “thousands” of people already returned their vote-by-mail applications, Secretary of State William Galvin’s office said Tuesday.
“Voters who have not already applied are encouraged to submit their applications as soon as possible to ensure the timely delivery of their ballots,” Galvin’s office said in a press release, adding that people who have already returned their applications may expect to receive their ballots “very soon.”
Voters must return their applications to local election offices by Aug. 26 via post or drop-off. Ballots must be submitted to local election offices by no later than 8 p.m. on primary day, Sept. 1, in order to be counted. Voters can track their ballots online.
Early in-person voting for the state primary — available for the first time — will run from Aug. 22 to 28. While people who return mailed ballots can’t vote in person, those who request a ballot but don’t fill it out can still go to a polling location to vote.
The registration deadline for this year’s primary is Aug. 22.
The drastic expansion of vote by mail prompted by the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t quite gone off without a hitch. The state has seen “thousands” of the 4.5 million ballot applications it mailed out returned to sender after they were sent to residences where people no longer lived, Galvin spokeswoman Debra O’Malley said.
O’Malley chalked the issue up to the requirement that applications be mailed to both active and inactive voters — the latter of which remain on local lists until they register to vote elsewhere, confirm in writing that they’ve moved or fail to vote in two consecutive federal elections.
“These applications were sent by non-forwardable mail purposefully, so that voters who have moved from the address where they were registered would not receive an application to vote from an address where they are no longer eligible,” O’Malley wrote in an email to the Herald.
She also dismissed concerns over the state’s readiness to handle an onslaught of mail-in ballots, saying the “systems in place for counting mail-in ballots in Massachusetts are completely different from those in New York” — where a delay in counting ballots has left two congressional races hanging in the balance.
