MA General Election has greater turn out than State Primaries

(Another follow-up on the MA General Elections)

BOSTON – The Cummington Street voting site had a larger voter turnout for this week’s Massachusetts General Election than it did for the State Primary Election back in September.

“We’ve already had 63 people come to vote,” said Mark D. Trachtenberg, the warden in charge of the 111 Cummington Street polling location. “I think we’ll get over 100 by the end of the day.”

The voting lounge at 111 Cummington Street, which holds offices for Boston University’s Computer Science Department, only had six voters come out by 5 p.m. on September 14. This past Tuesday, over 60 people already came to vote by 4 p.m., with a line beginning to form again around 4:30 p.m.

“We’ve had a bigger voter turnout this month which is good, but along with that, there’s been a Hell of a lot of paperwork,” said Trachtenberg, expressing one of his personal disagreements with the current voting process.

An individual is considered an inactive voter if he or she does not return an address confirmation card to the registrar of voters. In order to become active, individuals must confirm their address with the local registrar before the election. This process can be tedious in a city with a high percentage of student voters.

“It’s a customer service atrocity and an unnecessary inconvenience,” said Trachtenberg.

Although the inactive voter’s right to vote is not jeopardized in the general election unless a candidate calls for a ballot recount, extra paperwork is involved in the process in order to uphold the city census.

“I hoped someone in the government’s office would complain, but every year the process remains the same,” said Trachtenberg.

Citizens who come in to vote and find themselves inactive must fill out an additional three pages of paperwork in order to link voter outcome to the city census. According to Trachtenberg, this discriminates mostly against college students.

“Most people are very patient with the process, and maybe they shouldn’t be,” he said.

The fact that students and other individuals are still willing to vote even with the excess paperwork is a positive sign for the overall general election voter outcome.

“It’s still great to see more young people out voting. Your city council can do more for you than the president,” said Trachtenberg. “The local candidates deserve the recognition, and they are worth listening to and voting for.”