Town Clerks report record numbers for Tri-Town early voting

Oct 27, 2020

As the Nov. 3 election approaches, residents in Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester have come out in full force to vote early. 

“I can tell you from my experience that the percentage is way up,” Rochester Town Clerk Paul Dawson said.

He said that 47% of the town’s registered voters have already cast their ballots either in-person or by mail. 

Of the 2,077 mail-in ballots that were sent out to Rochester voters, 1,543 had returned by Oct. 26, with ballots still arriving. 

Dawson said that “more and more people are taking advantage” of early voting, and that he doesn’t even have to look back to past elections to see the drastic rise in early turnout. Just this year, 429 new residents registered to vote. 

Mattapoisett sent out around 2,000 mail-in ballots, and Town Clerk Catherine Hueberger said at least 1,000 of them have been returned so far. 

“We’ve all been working very hard with very little time off,” Hueberger said. 

Even though there was no way for Hueberger to easily count the exact number of mail-in ballots returned so far, she said it was clear that mail-in voting has been more popular this election.

Hueberger said the early voting in-person was a little more popular in 2016. In that election cycle, the Clerk’s office saw around double the in-person voters it has seen in this election. 

But of the 5,200 residents listed as active voters, 969 have voted early in person. 

Marion has 4,379 registered voters and mailed out 2,317 early voting ballots. Another 565 additional people have voted early in person. 

Town Clerk Elizabeth Magauran said that around 3,200 Marion residents voted in the 2016 election. With early ballot returns totaling 1,844 between in-person, mail-in, and voting by dropbox, she said she’s interested to see what total turnout will look like this year. 

But an increase in early voting isn’t the only thing that Town Clerks have to worry about this election. They have to be able to maintain social distancing and cleanliness standards on election day due to the pandemic. 

“It’s common sense stuff,” Dawson said, like hiring additional people to clean voting booths and set up social distancing protocols.

And even though early voting has been popular in the Tri-Town, Dawson said there will still likely be long lines on election day. 

“The more people that vote early, the shorter the lines become,” Dawson said.