Updated headline
According to WHDH, Secretary of State Bill Galvin has asked a state court to allow municipalities in the Fourth Congressional District to complete their counts of outstanding ballots. Apparently, not all cities and towns have counted all of the ballots that arrived before 8:00 last night, including Newton. And, there isn’t provision in state law to allow cities and states to continue counting past election day.
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Previously:
WHDH is reporting that clerks have been told to stop counting and to seal votes in the 4th Congressional District. An announcement is, apparently, coming this afternoon.
We will update this post as information becomes available.
I can see both camps hiring Election Lawyers. Dennis Newman is one of the best.
It’s certainly good and right to count all these ballots, but I’m not sure how or if this will change the outcome. According to the WBUR summary (https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/09/01/massachusetts-senate-congress-primary-race-results) Jake leads Jesse 33,242 to 31,812, or about 1400 votes (with 96.36 of precincts counted). Do the math to see how many additional votes would have to be counted to shift the result.
For example, in Newton, she beat him by 1,000 votes out of the original 28,000 cast. If there are 1,200 additional to be counted, as per David Olsen, and they come in in the same proportion, it would reduce her gap by 43 votes. And so on, town by town. And in most towns, her relative margin was less than in Newton, or even negative.
I guess if the margin gets small enough to push us into an automatic recount, there could be surprises, but most recounts don’t shift many votes.
Who told the clerks to stop counting, asks my mother in Florida. Or did they stop counting in order to get this into court because of the vagueness of the law?
Jesse needs to concede. Give it up. She’s pulling a Donauld Trump. ha
Paul, don’t you believe that all votes should be counted, no matter the outcome? E Miller, our democracy requires that every vote is counted. Wanting that to happen is not “pulling” anything. The MA Secretary of State understands that bedrock of democracy.
To clarify @Paul, if you agree every vote should be counted, why speculate on whether or not those extra votes make a difference? Doing so seems to me to be a way to question the importance of counting every vote.
Count every ballot that was on time. Both remaining candidates agree. We can wait an extra day or two in order to have an unimpeachable process. We will have more of this in November, when the stakes are far higher, and need to get used to the idea that we won’t have instant gratification with so many mail-in votes, unless state and local governments start counting absentee ballots early.
@Paul, your math is correct, unless there are many more uncounted ballots than we realize.
Janet, Jesse is actually my preferred candidate, as I’ve made clear here many time. I don’t see that speculating about the result undermines the importance of an accurate count. It’s just an observation, to avoid what I think could be false hopes. John White has it exactly right about the importance, especially as we head to November.
I agree with John White. I essentially said the same thing, Paul.
Regardless of preferences or the eventual outcome, all votes still have to be counted, but they still have to be counted properly in terms of time and methodology. The national news and talk programs this morning were marveling at how smoothly the vote and count went in Massachusetts. I was a bit surprised that just about all the results were public when I woke up on Wednesday morning. Another tip of the hat to Bill Galvin and to the dedicated poll workers who braved the pandemic to record and count all the votes.
Yes, you did, Janet. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise and apologize if that was the impression. I was referring mainly to John’s thoughts about November.
This shows the basic problem with mail-in voting using the same deadline as election day. Correct me for lack of knowledge, but what prevents someone from voting at the polls (The most exciting way to vote), and then dropping off their mail-in ballot at City Hall the same day?
I believe the end date for mail-in should be the same as early voting to provide the clerk’s office the time to catch up.
The everyday voter most likely just wants this to happen as always, and avoid the drama, while the extremes on the left and right both believe the other is trying to steal the election. A lot of paranoia.
Jim – The mail-in ballot is in an envelope with the voter’s signature on it. If someone tried to double vote (as the President suggested they try to do), then the mail-in ballot would be discarded.
Right, Jane. Jim, of all the things to worry about in this or the November election, this doesn’t make the grade. Instead, let’s worry about the USPS’ ability to deliver things on time.
Jim, double voting is illegal! Why is Trump encouraging people engage in illegal activity?
You can debate if the right controls are in place but calling for voter fraud to avoid voter fraud is not the solution
@Claire: Of course double voting is illegal, that is the point of my question. There are bad people out there and you need checks and balances. Like the President or not, what the president has said is he wants to prevent this double voting, not encourage it, so why do people get this intent backwards? Ending mail-in voting a few days early would allow for this to be checked? Seems logical?
@Jim, I’d argue that it’s better to allow people to vote up until 8 p.m. on Election Day and not get the results immediately than it is to remove an avenue for voting. What’s the harm in learning today who won instead of Tuesday night?
Jim- The voter’s signature is right on the envelope of the ballot. The mail-in ballot would be thrown out if the person had already voted in person. The president is only trying to stir up trouble – as he does every day of the week. We’re all so tired. We just want normal. Is that asking so much? You don’t need to feed into his every fear-mongering comment or tweet.
@Jim “Ending mail-in voting a few days early would allow for this to be checked? Seems logical?” Not when the administration is implementing strategies to slow down the mail unless the voter can get a date/time stamp on the submittal
Personally, in the current environment, I would NEVER mail in my vote but I am not at high risk
@James Cote asked, “what prevents someone from voting at the polls (The most exciting way to vote), and then dropping off their mail-in ballot at City Hall the same day?”
I think the answer is that all mailed-in and dropped-off ballots are held sealed until after the polls close at 8PM. Only then are the mail-in/drop-off ballots (still sealed) reviewed and checked against the voter rolls, at which time the officials reject any mail-in/drop-off ballot that is from someone who is 1) not registered OR 2) already voted in person OR 3) already has a mail-in.drop-off ballot accepted. Then the mail-in/drop-off ballots that were accepted through this process are opened and scanned. Think of it as a separate polling location that is opened at 8PM but only for the mail-in/drop-off ballots. Voters are checked-off against the voter rolls there just as they are by poll workers at in-person polling locations. Officials cannot start that process until the in-person polling locations are closed and their updated voter lists are returned for use in this processing.
That’s just my guess. I think it explains why voting results are announced later with a high volume of mail-in/drop-off ballots.
It’s Thursday afternoon, and we just had our first mail delivery since Monday, not atypical for this street. Which leads me to suggest that people who are wary of mail-in voting use in-person early voting instead. My husband and I voted at the library a week before primary election day. The wait outside took only a couple of minutes; we’d have come back later in the week if the line had been too long. The room (the main lecture hall) is just inside the door, very large and with very few people in it at any one time. The procedures are as secure as voting at the polls. Everyone wore a mask. There was hand sanitizer at the check-in and check-out tables. If you’re nervous about using the communal marking pen and glue stick (for sealing the privacy envelope), you can bring a pair of disposable gloves from home. Unless you’re going to be away or are genuinely housebound, it’s an opportunity to vote conveniently and securely without burdening the USPS or your polling place.
Matt Stout, Globe reporter, post on Twitter within the last hour:
Things are getting more complicated in #MA04: @BillGalvin4MA’s office said Franklin, the last community cleared to tally uncounted ballots today, actually has 3,000 votes they need to count — far more than the 600 its clerk initially estimated.
Just fyi, in the presidential primary, Biden beat both Warren and Sanders in Franklin, but the two combined equaled him. For whatever that means in terms of political leanings!
Stout also reports: Newton has finished tallying the 751 uncounted ballots:
Auchincloss: 161 additional votes
Mermell: 222 additional votes
Mermell picks up: 61
I am surprised Franklin even had 3000 votes total given the total votes in neighboring towns
Stout tweet: With newly counted votes from two communities, @JakeAuch’s lead over @jessemermell dipped to 1,377 votes in #MA04. But the focus is now on Franklin, where officials are (currently) four hours into combing through 3,000 uncounted ballots
More from Stout an hour ago: A 3,000-vote count is a laborious process: Working in pairs, volunteers split the ballots into sets of 50 to count them.
After roughly three hours, they’ve gone through ballots for three precincts. There’s eight precincts in Franklin.
Any reason given for why they didn’t count them until today?
Or why the number went from 600 to 3000? Stranger than fiction, Jane!
Franklin should come in strongly for Jake.
Stout, an hour ago: Update in #MA04: Officials are counting ballots in the final precinct here in Franklin, and expect to have full results tonight, the last among the district’s 34 cities and towns.
And, Stout, just now: Spox for @BillGalvin4MA says local officials are inputting vote totals as we speak.
The hope is to have Franklin results within next half-hour. After that, it’s waiting to see if the @AP calls the #MA04 primary between @JakeAuchand @jessemermell
At 1:30 AM the AP has called the race with a win for Auchincloss. Franklin reports 1538 votes for him and he expanded his lead over Mermell by 656 votes.
@Lisap – Wow, 1:48AM. That’s commitment (obsession? 🙂 )
Ha, Jerry-
A little bit of both with a big side of insomnia.
One thing is very clear to me as a result of this election that will be true again in November – the Town and City Clerks across the country need all the help they can get. Please join me in volunteering to help make election day run smoothly in our city:
http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/elections/poll_workers.asp