4 Comments

1. 

   Julia Malakie on August 22, 2015 at 11:00 am

   I was wondering where this post went. I tried to comment when it briefly appeared on Tuesday, but the thread evaporated while I was typing the comment!

   This is for anyone planning to register online, which is a state, not city, system. I sent the short-lived V14 post link to a woman I’d just met the day before who was new to Newton and wanted to register and was wondering if it could be done online. She registered online and got this not-very-reassuring message:

   Your application for voter registration has been transmitted to the election official for your city or town. You will be notified of the results of your application within 2 to 3 weeks by your city or town. If approved, the notice will contain your polling place. Your election official will contact you if further clarification is required.

   If you do not receive a response in 2 to 3 weeks, contact your local election official:

   which would have been after the deadline to register for the preliminary.

   But I contacted David Olson, who had this very helpful response:

   The state new on-line registration system places all successful change or new registration requests in our processing queue within 24 hours of the voters on-line request. We check the queue each morning and make the changes to an individual’s record. The system prints out a confirmation letter as we process each request and we snail-mail out those confirmations that day. The confirmation should show up in their mailbox in a few days.

   The on-line registration system’s boiler plate text that was generated for your friend is the same for all communities. In some of the smaller towns, where the clerk is part-time and registrations may not be processed on a daily basis, it may take a couple of weeks to get that mailed confirmation.

   Within 72 hours of a Newton resident’s on-line registration request, the State’s on-line Voter Registration Status look-up site should reflect the changes that were made. You can access the site here: http://www.sec.state.ma.us/VoterRegistrationSearch/MyVoterRegStatus.aspx

   If the individuals registration does not show up on the look-up site above within a day or two, then definitely the belt and suspenders approach is always acceptable. They can come in and complete a registration form here in the office.

   And in fact, the woman I met did get her confirmation letter from the city on Thursday, a two-day turnaround.

   Bottom line: don’t panic if you see that response from the state website, but if you want to register online and be absolutely sure you get registered, do it by Wednesday, and be able to go in on Friday to do it in person if the online for some reason doesn’t work. (But it probably will.)

2. 

   isabelle on August 25, 2015 at 2:35 pm

   Do you have to do anything if you have already voted in Newton? Does a primary require any special registration?

3. 

   Ron on August 25, 2015 at 10:43 pm

   @Isabelle. I only registered once a long time ago and usually vote. I’ve never had a problem.

   For new voters it sounds like registering on-line is straightforward. Using V14 for voting in Newton elections would really make it easy. Plus of he worked on doing this we’d find out how much power Greg really has.

   • 

     Greg Reibman on August 26, 2015 at 9:22 pm

     @Ron: Haha. I’m pretty sure I’m not very powerful. If I did, I would have successfully goaded Newton Villages Alliance into revealing the names of its steering committee by now.