SINGLE POLLING STATION PROPOSED FOR AMHERST VOTERS. VOTING BY MAIL ENCOURAGED
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Town Clerk Shavena Martin has proposed eliminating the Town’s eight current polling locations and replacing them with town-wide voting at Amherst Regional High School.
Voters currently cast ballots at polling stations located throughout the town. The use of all three elementary schools while classes are in session, in particular, has been a source of concern in terms of safety and security. In addition, the North Amherst Fire Station is not available this year because of the pandemic.
Martin described preliminary plans for the use of the high school’s gymnasiums for in-person voting, with further details to be determined. The plans were made in consultation with Town Manager Paul Bockelman, School Superintendent Michael Morris, Fire Chief Tim Nelson, Superintendent of Public Works Guilford Mooring, and Facilities Managers. According to Martin, Morris indicated that professional development days would be scheduled on election days so that students would not be in attendance.
In addition to resolving conflicts around the use of the elementary schools, Martin said the establishment of a single polling station would offer greater and more consistent oversight of elections and allow staffing efficiencies and cost savings by avoiding building rental fees and decreasing the number of constables required. She also suggested that siting all 10 precincts in one location “limits possible exposure to COVID-19” and would aid in contact tracing. There was no mention of whether the Director of Public Health was consulted about this proposal.
Martin acknowledged several concerns about the proposed centralization of in-person voting including the potential for inhibition of turnout/voter suppression, confusion caused by a change in long standing custom, the lack of adjacent public transport stops, and increased travel distances for voters. She pledged an extensive effort to inform the public and to prioritize safety and security, and emphasized that voting by mail, rather than in-person, would be encouraged and facilitated. She and Bockelman are also exploring the possibility of shuttle vans and/or negotiating for an election day PVTA stop at the high school to assist in transportation challenges.
The number of voters who will choose to vote in-person on election day rather than by mail or during early voting is, of course, unknown. Over the past decade, voter turnout has been approximately 15,000 for Presidential elections, 9,000 for Midterm elections, and 4,000 for State Primaries. Also unknown is how many college students will be returning to town this fall.
The Town Council must vote to approve a change in polling station location and must evaluate and report on whether such a change would have a “disparate adverse impact” on an individual’s ability to vote based on race, national origin, disability, income, or age. Council President Griesemer indicated that the Council will take this vote on August 3.
Vote By Mail and Early Voting
Martin informed the Council that the Massachusetts Secretary of State has mailed postcards to all registered voters about the availability of “no excuse” voting by mail this fall. This means that, for both the primary and general elections this fall, voters do not need to claim being out of town, physical disability, or religious beliefs as reasons to use an absentee ballot. It is not clear if voting by mail will continue beyond the pandemic.
Early voting will be offered for both the State primary election and the Presidential election. However, early voting will not be available on the UMass campus for either election this fall, so if UMass students do not use voting by mail, they would have to vote in-person on election day or at the early voting location in town.
Martin said that the Secretary of State will be providing PPE and cleaning supplies for use at polling stations this fall. She also noted that she is always looking to hire additional poll workers; interested persons should contact the Town Clerk at townclerk@amherst.gov or (413) 259-3035.
If you have not received a postcard to apply to vote by mail, you can complete this form and send it to the Amherst Town Clerk at 4 Boltwood Ave. Residents can check on their voter registration status here.
| State Primary | Presidential Election | |
| Registration Deadline | August 22 | October 24 |
| Vote by Mail Application Deadline | August 26 | October 28 |
| Early Voting Dates | August 22 – 28 | October 17 – 30 |
| Early Voting Location | Bangs Community Center | TBD |
| Election Day | September 1 | November 3 |
| Election Day Polling Location (proposed) | ARHS Gymnasium | ARHS Gymnasium |
I anticipate very long lines at the single voting station, given the history of long lines at the polling stations where UMass students vote. How will disabled and elderly voters who can’t stand in lines for any length of time be accommodated? The distance from the parking lot to the gym is a long walk also. Where would be the handicapped parking area be? Seeing a disaster looming, I have mailed in the card for absentee voting in both elections. I wonder how many UMass students received these cards from the Sec’y of State and how many will be delivered to them in a timely manner given their many address changes since they registered to vote?
Odd to be gathering people into one spot on an Election Day when turnout will be very high. What happened to early voting, voting on campus for students and small easy to get to neighborhood polling places? Would you want to be an election worker sitting behind a table as thousands of people come in? Does HS gym have windows that open? The Munson does, as do the elementary school cafeterias. How many cars does the HS parking lot take? How many people will stand on lines for how long? What if it rains? How will people get to HS? Can college students leave their campuses-and how will they get to HS? Turnout has been strong in many primaries.
Thank you for reading and commenting, Hilda. You raise important points.
Knowing the number of registered voters who request vote by mail ballots as well as the number of people who avail themselves of early voting will provide some information with which to estimate the number of people who might vote in person on Election Day. However, that information will not be known until right before the election and obviously won’t be helpful for decision-making now about consolidation of polling sites.
I believe that there are currently 8 voting locations in Amherst, not 7, for the 10 precincts.
Besides the schools, the only regular voting sites that have been mentioned as potentially not being available for elections this year include the Munson Memorial Library and the two churches (North Zion Korean Church and Immanuel Lutheran Church), none of which are currently open to the public. The Bangs Center is also not currently open to the public, but is listed as being an early voting site. I’m not sure how that will work.
As someone who has worked at elections in Amherst for close to two decades, including most recently at Crocker Farm, as the election warden there, I am glad that the elem schools are no longer being used as polling places while school is in session. The voting place at Crocker Farm, the gym, is located in the middle of the school, and during past presidential elections, throngs of voters have used the same hallways as students, passing classrooms and classes walking in the hallways as they do so. If there is no school on election days, the main issues with using the elementary schools as voting sites disappear. With the Town Council and change to town elections to November, in March, in most school years, there would be at most two school days that are election days; with ARPS’s and teachers agreement, those days could be non-school days, professional development days. Some benefits of having voting at the schools are that school buildings are accessible, having a good amount of parking (especially if there is no school that day), and that people know where they are, since voting has taken place at them for years.
A few other concerns, regarding mail-in voting:
1) I am wondering how much voters, even here in Massachusetts, will trust mail-in voting giving how politicians and media sources have been speaking out against it. Numerous studies have been done showing almost no evidence of fraud in mail in voting (save a few individual cases here & there), but some people continue to argue loudly against it. It is safest for sure, but there are some voters who still won’t trust it, and others who will procrastinate and not get their mail-in ballot requests sent in, in time, for them to receive and return their mail-in ballots by election day.
2) The MA Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office sent the automated mail-in voter forms to all registered voters. But often with college students for example (as well as others who change addresses frequently), the address on record is out of date. For example, the Amherst Town Census is conducted in the spring, but voting is in the fall. Often college students who live on campus between one school year and the next, and their new address might not be recorded in the state voter database. Also, with so many college students away from Amherst, I wonder if the mail-in ballot application form will get forwarded to their home/family addresses, even those out of state.
Lots can go wrong when a new system is introduced, as today’s NYTimes story “Anatomy of an Election Meltdown” on chaotic story voting in Georgia. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/us/politics/georgia-election-voting-problems.html The Times story starts with this story:
‘Last month, Daryl Marvin got his first taste of voting in Georgia.
Mr. Marvin had previously lived in Connecticut, where voting was a brisk process measured in minutes. But on the day of the primary, June 9, he and his wife waited four hours to vote at Park Tavern, an Atlanta restaurant where more than 16,000 voters were consolidated into a single precinct. An electrical engineer by training, Mr. Marvin was baffled by what he saw when he finally got inside: a station with 15 to 20 touch screens on which to vote but only a single scanner to process the printed ballots.
“The scanner was the choke point,” he said. “Nobody thought about it, and this is Operations Research 101. It’s not very difficult to figure it out.”
Captured in drone footage, beamed across airwaves and internet, the interminable lines at Atlanta polling sites became an instant and indelible omen of voting breakdown in this pandemic-challenged presidential election year.’
It occurred to me that Cherry Hill golf carts could be used to take seniors et al. with difficulty standing for any length of time from the High School parking lot to the polling booths. Perhaps the Scouts or a school service organization would like to be drivers for the day.
Now on the amherstma.gov web site, the Amherst Town Council Report on Polling Place Consolidation (7/29/2020).
Quoting from the document: “In accordance with Section 11 of Chapter 115 of the Acts of 2020, the Amherst Town
Council has determined that the public convenience and public health would be better served by changing the current eight polling places for our ten voting precincts to a single building within the municipality. Furthermore, the Amherst Town Council has determined to make this change permanent.”
The proposed consolidation will be voted on at the next Town Council meeting.
https://www.amherstma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/52289/8a-Amherst-Town-Council-Report-on-Polling-Place-Consolidation-with-slides
Email TC urging them not to make consolidation to a single polling place permanent until such time, post elections, when data and additional information is available to assess in detail whether/not this plan has had a “disparate, adverse impact on the basis of disability, age, race, national origin or income” for in-person voting this year. Voter suppression is a potential unintended consequence and is unknown by Monday’s TC decision. Why would we want this to be permanent when it is premature?