Mass GOP rips push to extend mail-in voting
Massachusetts Republicans ripped House lawmakers — including one of their own — for moving to extend universal mail-in voting through June during a sparsely attended informal session this week.
In the Monday session attended by three lawmakers and gaveled in by Minority Leader Brad Jones, the House voted to extend a temporary mail-in voting law through June 30. The proposal is awaiting action by the Senate.
Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Jim Lyons called the move to advance what he called “controversial” legislation during an informal session a “complete and total disgrace.”
“Rep. Jones and the Democrats worked together to circumvent the rules and the intent of an informal session to ram through a piece of controversial legislation without a debate, without a hearing, and without a roll call,” Lyons said, calling top House Republican Jones “complicit” in the act.
Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin and several Beacon Hill lawmakers are seeking to make the vote-by-mail system permanent. Galvin during a budget hearing with lawmakers on Tuesday, pointed to the “successful” vote-by-mail efforts in 2020 that he credited for helping bring about “record turnout” in the presidential primary and general elections amid the pandemic.
But the massive vote-bymail effort was not without problems. Local and city clerks had to make huge investments in staffing and training to accommodate never-before-seen numbers of mail-in ballots. Galvin’s office was c alled in to oversee a count when thousands of uncounted ballots were discovered in Franklin following the 2020 primary.
Galvin is asking lawmakers to bump his $5.8 million elections budget up to $8 million next year to cover the added costs of expanded mail-in voting.
A group of four Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Ryan Fattman, R-Sutton, in a letter to House Speaker Ronald Mariano on Tuesday said “we owe it to the voters” to study the system before making it permanent.
Fattman; Rep. Shawn Dooley, R-Dedham; Rep. Marc Lombardo, R-North Reading; and Rep. Nicholas Boldyga, R-Southwick; also questioned why universal vote-by-mail is necessary with “several COVID-19 vaccines being distributed.”
Lawmakers said they also sent a formal request issued to Galvin in December to conduct a strengths-and-weaknesses analysis of last fall’s use of no-fault early mail-in voting.