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NEW BEDFORD — Three moving trucks rolled up to City Hall at nine Friday morning loaded with some of a democratic republic’s essential gear. Voting booths, folding tables, ballot bins, American flags were all headed for city polling places as officials prepared for the statewide preliminary election on Tuesday.
A crew of six and a supervisor from A. Walecka & Son movers of Wareham gathered inside City Hall to review their day’s stops and to pick up specially equipped handicapped-access voting machines. There’s one for each location, each about the size of a suitcase suitable for several weeks overseas.
Key 2024 election dates
The state’s primary election is just two weeks away — on Sept. 3, the Tuesday after Labor Day. The general election follows nine weeks later on Nov. 5.
Sept. 3 primary election
Key dates in the primary election for New Bedford voters:
Aug. 24: Last day to register for primary election voting.
Aug: 26: Last day to apply for voting by mail in the primary election.
Aug. 24-30: Early voting for the primary election, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the New Bedford Main Public Library, 613 Pleasant St.
Sept. 3: Primary election. Polling hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Nov. 5 general election
The general election is Nov. 5, with a new set of deadlines.
Oct. 26: Last day to register for voting in the Nov. 5 election.
Oct. 28: Last day to apply for voting by mail in the Nov. 5 election.
Oct. 19 to Nov. 1: Early voting from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Main Public Library, 613 Pleasant St.
Nov. 5: General election. Polls open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
More voter info
Where do you vote? To find your specific polling location, enter your street address and postal zip code in this online form. Check the list of New Bedford’s polling locations here.
Get additional info on voter registration, eligibility, requirements, etc., at the Massachusetts Secretary of Commonwealth website.
Find a list of Massachusetts candidates in the Democratic and Republican primary races.
Learn more about voting in New Bedford and find applications for absentee ballots and applications for voting by mail at the New Bedford Election Commission website.
Find additional information about voting in Massachusetts at Vote 411, from the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
The usual schedule would have the Walecka crew there on the Monday before Election Day, but this year that Monday is Labor Day. So the movers won’t be working, but many city employees will be.
“It’s not a first, we’ve done it before,” said Deborah Gonzaga-Reed, an administrative assistant in the New Bedford Election Department. “You gotta do what you got to do.”
The crew would be back on Labor Day with other city workers to deliver more polling place supplies, including cell phones, voter lists, and detailed instructions for poll workers, said Manny DeBrito, who chairs the Board of Election Commissioners and heads the city’s Election Department.
Then they all planned to return before dawn on Election Day, with the Walecka crew, to deliver the ballots and the voting machines that count them to 28 locations — sites of 36 precincts and five sub-precincts — in time to open at 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
Similar frenzies of activity were unfolding in city and town halls across the state, as election workers adjusted to the day-after-Labor Day schedule.
“The clerks don’t like it, they don’t get the Labor Day” holiday, said Debra O’Malley, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth. The timing is largely determined by federal law that took effect in 2010, she said.
To accommodate voters overseas, ballots for federal elections have to be ready at least 49 days before Election Day in November. Allowing time for printing and distributing ballots pushes the preliminary election to early September, O’Malley said.
This year’s statewide ballots include a three-way Republican race to decide who will challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking a third six-year term. As in her two previous elections, Warren has no Democratic primary challenge.
Primary ballots in the New Bedford area also include races in two state legislative districts where Democratic incumbents first elected in 1992 are retiring. There’s a two-way Republican race in the district represented by Rep. Bill Straus, of Mattapoisett, and a two-way Democratic race for the seat now held by Sen. Marc Pacheco, of Taunton.
Sen. Mark Montigny, of New Bedford, also elected in 1992, is facing a long-shot challenge in the Democratic primary.
O’Malley said that while there’s been “a lot of hand-wringing” about voter turnout being depressed by the day-after-Labor Day schedule, there isn’t any evidence that this has happened. Since the law changed, primary Election Day has fallen on the Tuesday after Labor Day in 2018 and 2022.
Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin said last week that he was figuring on a turnout somewhere between the highest and lowest numbers for recent state primaries, State House News Service reported. That was probably due to the lack of competition, Galvin said.
According to the news account, Galvin forecast a state turnout of about 15% of nearly 5 million registered voters — between the low of nearly 9% in 2016 and nearly 40% in 2020.
Several factors appeared to contribute to the relatively robust 2020 turnout, the news service reported. Democratic U.S. Sen. Edward Markey faced a primary challenge, several candidates competed for the U.S. House seat that was vacated by former Rep. Joseph Kennedy III, and the pandemic apparently encouraged mail-in voting.
DeBrito said mail-in voting in the city keeps growing. He said the office received between 8,000 to 9,000 applications for mail-in ballots this election cycle, about 2,000 more than during the initial push for mail-ins during the pandemic. He could not yet say how many completed ballots had been returned.
Mail-in voting was apparently gaining at the expense of in-person early voting, which DeBrito said was “slow, very slow” at the one location at the New Bedford Free Public Library main branch across from City Hall. A week of early voting ended there on Friday.
DeBrito said steps have been taken to avert the glitches some polling places experienced on presidential primary day on March 5.
According to a 43-page report released in May by the City Solicitor’s Office, Republican ballots were not there when one polling place in the North End opened, but were delivered 40 minutes later. Another North End location ran out of Republican ballots briefly in the afternoon.
One voting machine in Ward 3 had what the report called a “minor jam,” and power ran out in two voting machines in Ward 1 because the machine was left unplugged, running on backup battery power.
The report found that a total of 11 voters were affected by the ballot shortages at the two locations, and all were able to cast ballots. The problems were not intentional, the report said, and had no “effect on even a single vote being able to be cast successfully.”
DeBrito said his office addressed the 14 recommendations in the report. He said more detailed instructions have been distributed to poll workers, more than the usual number of Republican ballots are being delivered to polling locations, and all machines have been serviced and tested.
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
