PM Issues Committee chair Jonathan Cohn penned an editorial for CommonWealth earlier today about the need to pass a strong COVID voting protections package. Read an excerpt below and the full piece here:
THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE primary on September 1 is now less than 100 days away. If we want to avoid the horror stories we’ve seen from states like Wisconsin and Florida, then the Legislature needs to take action — and fast — to ensure we can have a high-participation election while protecting public health.
First, we need to expand early voting to include primaries. The landmark 2014 election modernization bill brought early voting to Massachusetts, and it’s been a hit. When it premiered in the 2016 general election, more than 1 million voters chose to vote early. Early voting will help spread the number of in-person voters out across a greater number of days, making it easier for both voters and poll workers to follow physical distancing guidelines.
Second, we need to reduce the number of people who have to show up in person to vote, and that means embracing vote-by-mail. How to go about this was a major sticking point during the recent legislative hearing on election reform, with some legislators preferring to simply enable every voter to request an absentee ballot, others wanting to mail every eligible voter an absentee ballot application, and others wanting to go further to mail every voter a ballot.
