|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Elections this fall will have a too-narrow window for the City of New Bedford to send and receive an increasing number of mail-in ballots, which have more than doubled over the last two municipal elections, local election officials say.
The City Council rejected a measure last Thursday that would’ve moved the preliminary city election from Oct. 7 to Sept. 16 to allow more time to securely process mail-in voting ballots in the general election. New Bedford’s bipartisan Election Commission had recommended the earlier date. So had the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. The Council itself had voted for the change in a subcommittee.
The now finalized date for the preliminary election, Oct. 7, leaves four weeks until the general election, on Nov. 4. City and state election officials say that’s a tight window to prepare ballots for the general election, mail them out to constituents, and get them back in time.
If the preliminary vote requires a recount, election officials said, that window will tighten even further — to the point that the increasingly popular vote-by-mail may not be a feasible option for some city residents.
The council’s final decision was an about-face reversal. An earlier vote of all eleven councilors had recommended the change — by a vote of 7-4 — during a March 18 meeting of the committee on appointments and briefings.
On Thursday, however, support for the measure flipped. Seven councilors voted to disregard the proposed change, while only four voted to keep it alive. Councilors Ian Abreu, Leo Choquette, and Joe Lopes had changed their minds from a month earlier. Another councilor, Ryan Pereira, said he needed further clarification to understand exactly what was being proposed.
So, what happened?
On March 31, local radio personality Chris McCarthy thanked his WBSM listeners for their pressure on the council: “It’s worth your time to pick up the call, exercise your democratic right, to call your councilors, call your state representatives, call your senator’s office. It works, it really works. Particularly when you partner with me, right?”
The proposal for moving the preliminary election date had just come up for approval in the council a few days prior. But it failed. (The March 27 vote was the first time the measure failed. Last Thursday’s vote was the second time it failed, after several councilors requested more time to deliberate and seek further information.)
McCarthy continued: “When you partner with me, we can get a lot done, because we got good people on that City Council who will listen to you. They recognize that their ability to be on the City Council comes from the power you lend them.”
McCarthy had elevated the proposed change for an earlier preliminary election into a central theme of his broadcasts. He called it “the scheme that was going on to steal democracy from the voters of New Bedford.” And he used Council President Shane Burgo’s support as a foothold to attack the Democratic councilor and allege serious election interference — without evidence.
He described the proposed earlier voting date as “a scheme to steal the election” and “a scheme by Shane Burgo and the nonprofits to overwhelm, in my opinion, overwhelm you, the average voter, with mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, all of that stuff.”
Of Burgo, McCarthy said: “You can’t trust a word that comes out of that guy’s mouth.”
McCarthy declined to comment on Monday, saying he was too busy.
Henry Bousquet, the Republican member of the Election Commission, described McCarthy as “just a loudmouth making noise.” He said the elections staff “need” this change, and that he was disappointed in the council’s change of heart: “They basically said, ‘you should work under duress.’”
Councilor Ryan Pereira disavowed McCarthy’s attack on New Bedford’s election security. “I’ve witnessed first hand how secure our voting system is. I have 100% confidence. I would bet every dollar in my pocket and in your pocket … that fraud on a large scale, a coordinated effort, or ballot-harvesting does not occur in our city.”
“I could not disagree with that more than anything else,” Pereira said.
Mail-in ballots have rapidly become a popular way to vote in municipal, state, and federal elections — including in New Bedford. In last year’s presidential election, which saw Republicans outperform their results in recent years, 32% of the New Bedford electorate (or 11,233 voters) used mail-in voting.
In municipal elections, a relatively smaller share of mail-in ballots has been on the rise, too: from about 5% of the New Bedford electorate in 2021, to more than 11% in 2023. (In the 2023 municipal election, there were 1,009 mail-in ballots.)
Manuel DeBrito, chair of New Bedford’s Election Commission, told the council in March that the increased load of mail-in ballots was requiring more of the election office’s time to process and administer. He told councilors that staff needed the extended timeframe, and that — especially with recent postal delays — the four weeks was no longer sufficient time for the thousands of mail in-ballots to be finalized, sent, filled out, returned, and processed.
New Bedford is the only city in Massachusetts that does not hold its primaries in September, and many cities have moved their preliminaries to September to accommodate easier mail-in voting in recent years, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office. (The exception is Cambridge, which does not hold preliminaries and uses ranked-choice voting for the general election.)
When this topic first surfaced — back in March — the only opposition to DeBrito’s request for an earlier preliminary election came from Councilors Naomi Carney, Brian Gomes, Linda Morad, and Shawn Oliver, who said that changing the date would be too confusing for voters.
“This is kind of mind-boggling for the people of this city, who are used to voting that first Tuesday [of October]. And it’s been like that forever and a day,” said Gomes, a 30-plus-year council veteran.
Oliver reiterated this point at another meeting, saying: “The unpredictability of our elections will discourage people from coming out.”
Councilors Gomes and Oliver consistently voted no on the proposal every time it came up. Other councilors changed their minds throughout the process, and that flipped the council.
The will of the people and buzz of the radio
Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette initially said Friday that he didn’t understand why there was a need to change the date of the preliminary election.
“Many people, they get used to it being on a certain day and time of the month,” Choquette said. “I felt as though a lot of the voters who depend on it being on a certain time may mistakenly go at the wrong time. People are creatures of habit.”
Pressed on why he voted against the recommendation of the bipartisan Election Commission — and his own previous vote — Choquette said that he felt a duty to represent what his constituents wanted, regardless of what he believed. He said he heard from about 50 constituents on the issue.
“I pride myself on being someone who represents my constituents and their voice. I may not agree, but I have to cast my vote the way that they feel,” Choquette said.
Choquette was loath to give McCarthy, the radio personality, credit for making the issue into a hot topic: “I don’t think [McCarthy] was a big factor in this. People give Chris McCarthy credit for changing the dynamic… but he’s not some massive guy that has that sway.”
Yet debates in council chambers referenced McCarthy: “It’s been somewhat of a talking point, not only in the streets but on the radio,” said Gomes during a March 27 council meeting. And all councilors and election officials who spoke for this article said they were aware of the radio buzz.
The councilors who changed their minds won praise from McCarthy. “You did it,” McCarthy told his listeners, “and they conformed to your request. You lent them the power, and you asked them, ‘Hey, do the right thing,’ and that includes Ian Abreu, Leo Chouquette in Ward 1, Ryan Pereira in Ward 6.”
Pereira had previously recommended an earlier preliminary election date. But during the full council meeting in March, Pereira voted against it.
In comments to The Light on Friday, Pereira said he wound up voting against the proposal because he, too, received many constituent calls in opposition. Pereira explained that his initial vote to recommend the earlier date was because he didn’t want to slow the process down — at the time, he said, he still had questions about the proposal.
Pereira said that McCarthy’s comments on the radio, which he denounced, may have “motivated some of the calls from constituents.” He added: “Fraud and scandal sells.”
Asked whether he felt pressure to represent the views of his constituents, even when they took up misinformation, Pereira said, “I feel responsible to educate my constituents or to ask them to trust me.” He continued, “I hope my constituents can say, ‘I can’t stand his politics, but he never lied to me.’”
Pereira pointed to another scandal that McCarthy amplified, in January, when he used his broadcasts to denounce Shane Burgo’s campaign for council president — a mostly ceremonial position voted on by other council members. At the time, McCarthy was alleging that Burgo’s role overseeing the council meetings could delve the body into leftist politics, such as defunding the police, which Burgo himself had never called for.
Pereira said that he had to confront constituents in January about the “made-up conspiracy theories” that McCarthy was spreading.
In the recent attacks on Burgo and his supporters, McCarthy repeatedly used the term “the Shane-dinistas” — a pun on the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan left-wing revolutionaries who first came to power in 1979.
Burgo rose in the council chambers on Thursday night, imploring the rest of the council to heed the advice of elections experts and to show “courage” in the face of political pressure.
“When we talk about confusion, we are the ones who create clarity or confusion. That responsibility falls on us,” Burgo said. “Right now we are standing at a fork in the road: One path leads to greater access, and the other to voter suppression. Those who choose to vote in person can still do so. The only people affected tonight are those that vote by mail: seniors, working people, disabled residents, single parents, people juggling two or three jobs.”
“This is a vote to disenfranchise a large portion of our residents, plain and simple. That should disturb every member of this council,” Burgo concluded.
In the end, the council voted to disregard the proposal, and it was removed from the docket.
Lopes declined to comment on his changed vote. Abreu, who also changed his vote, did not return The Light’s phone calls on Friday and Monday.
In the Oct. 7 preliminary election, New Bedford voters will begin choosing city councilors for the 2026-2027 term. The top two candidates in each ward and the top 10 candidates in the at-large race will advance to the Nov. 4 general election.
Email Colin Hogan at chogan@newbedfordlight.org
Question: Why is New Bedford the only city in Massachusetts not to have its preliminary voting in September? Hint Brian Gomes and Leo Choquette the wrong answer is “We’ve always done it this way”. At this crucial moment you both needed to step up for the working people, elderly, disabled, and any other person choosing to exercise their democratic right to vote. Instead, you voted for the status quo which will disenfranchise the people for whom you’re working. Disappointing.
Yes, we must remember that low voter turnout in November, 2024 produced the results that we are living with today. Mail-in ballots make it easier for the disabled, low income and marginalized in our city to help preserve their rights and services. This includes Medicare, Medicaid, our Postal Services, Education, Libraries, etc. Indiscriminate cuts are being made under the radar this very miute. And we should not forget our rights of due process for those accused of a crime. If one of us is unjustly sent to a for-profit prison, it can happen to any of us. This is why we ust all treasure our right to vote and USE it . For local news, we are indeed fortunate to have this excellent print and video source of information and we should support it as much as we can.
I feel really sad for the elderly people who are constantly manipulated by their opinion-host, Chris McCarthy, who uses shock and scare tactics to rile up his audience. My father, who listens to his program religiously, and has turned into a sour, negative, suspicious, and distrusting person. Shame on you Chris McCarthy for not presenting truth and positivity to a group of people who need that more than someone scaring them and making them anxious on a daily basis.
Amen! And a big thank you to the New Bedford Light for informing our New Bedford voters about this issue.
This is what happens when the workers state what they need to continue a job and request something for improvement which is better for all. Then you have the ignorant that have no idea what it takes to do the job. This is ridiculous, I thought I was reading an article on the school department. It’run by certain incompetent people and when things crash and burn they blame everyone else.
Increasing voter turnout helps to strengthen democracy. Expanding the mail-in ballot time helps to increase voter turnout. It is important for all of us to exercise our right and privilege to vote in order to protect the rights of all who live in our country.
This recent example illustrates why. In the past two days, American citizens in Oklahoma were detained in the night for over 20 hours by armed agents of our country. They were not the intended detention subjects.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5273754-citizens-ice-raid-oklahoma-city-deportations/
So far, I have seen no apology from the self described “ruler of this country and the world”. Instead, he is violating a court order to return a wrongfully detained resident of our country to the United States. In addition to being another attempt to deflect our attention from his wrongdoing, it is also an impeachable offense.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/us/trump-could-bring-abrego-garcia-back-us-hnk/index.html
So, you see why it is important for all us to exercise our voting rights, and why it is important to facilitate voting for our city residents and for all citizens.
We need to encourage more people to vote.
Many city residents were born here of immigrant parents. They should know that the Supreme Court will soon hear cases about Birthright Citizenship. The 14th amendment of the US Constitution grants citizenship to ALL who are born in the United States. . One of the first executive orders issued by our current president is the order to abolish Birthright Citizenship. While this effort is only supposed to apply to recent births, it is still important for us and could still affect us in the future.
In order to understand what this means, we need to first understand the three branches of our government. Each exists as a check and balance against abuses of power by the other two branches.
The powers of a US president are listed in Article 2 of our US Constitution. Presidential powers include the right to pardon people and delay executions. and includes recommending taxes and laws. Basically, the president is responsible for seeing that US Constitutional Law is enforced
Article 1 of the US /constitution primarily deals with Congress. and explains who may become a representative or senator.. SECTION 8 – GIVES CONGRESS POWER TO WRITE OUR LAWS, TO TAX AND SPEND, REGULATE TRADE, DECLARE WAR AND MANY OTHER POWERS THAT THIS PRESIDENT IS NOW ATTEMPTING TO ACQUIRE FOR HIS OWN OFFICE.
Article 3 of the US Constitution establishes the last of the three branches of government, the Judiciary which deals with the courts and judges and establishes the Supreme Court as the highest court in the US to uphold the US constitution.
NO ONE PERSON “RUNS THIS COUNTRY OR THE WORLD”. Our country is governed by our Congress, our Executive in the White House, and our Court System. Our president is using Executive Orders ,which have no force of law, to bypass the other two branches of our government in order to do things that are unconstitutional . Recent examples are denying due process to people accused of crimes, and refusing to enforce court orders.
This is the kind of activity one usually associates with dictatorships, where the ruler has the power to make people who disagree with the ruler “disappear”. Indeed, this president voiced intentions of deporting “home grown” persons, ( terrorists, he says, but he also uses that term to refer to those who disagree with him or oppose his actions.). It is amazing to me that the people who now still support him agree with what he is doing and would no doubt carry out his wishes locally.
So you see why increasing voter turnout and expanding the mail-in ballot timeline is important for all of us. We need to do whatever we can to encourage more people to vote.
Links to articles about birthright citizenship.
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-birthright-citizenship-trump-6f0cb929c4604ec1d9bf9fea99765b61
https://apnews.com/article/birthright-citizenship-immigration-trump-20919d26029cf0f98ecb0dc7f90a066b