Lawmakers mull expansion of voting by mail

All voters in Massachusetts could cast their ballots by mail under a constitutional amendment that is gaining momentum on Beacon Hill with support from leading legislators and the League of Women Voters.

The amendment would end the current requirement that a voter must be disabled, out of town, or unable to reach the polls for religious reasons to vote by absentee ballot.

Lawmakers say the measure recognizes that many voters, juggling busy work and family schedules, are often unable to squeeze in a trip to the polls on Election Day. Many voters are already ignoring the requirements and voting by absentee simply because it is more convenient.

In last year's presidential election, 110,000 Massachusetts voters requested absentee ballots, the most ever and nearly double the number from the presidential contest four years earlier, according to the secretary of state's office.

Lawmakers say that making it easier to vote by absentee ballot would dramatically increase participation. But critics fear it would transform Election Day from a collective civic experience into a routine chore no more significant than paying an electric bill. Also, some city and town clerks are worried about the cost of the additional paperwork.

The amendment has the support of both the House and Senate chairmen of the Legislature's Joint Committee on Election Laws. Within two days of its drafting last Wednesday, 31 other legislators signed up to cosponsor it. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for April 5.

''It seems like a logical thing to say: Anybody who wants to vote for any reason, for just convenience, for someone who doesn't want to wait in line on Election Day, ought to be able to exercise their right to vote by absentee ballot," said Senator Edward M. Augustus Jr., Democrat of Worcester, the newly appointed chairman of the Senate Election Laws Committee.

The supporters point to last year's presidential election in Florida, where 1.5 million voters, 20 percent of the electorate, cast ballots early, either though absentee voting or by walking into a polling place, which that state also allows.

''It's a question of removing the obstacles to voting," said Risa Nyman, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, which has been lobbying heavily for the amendment.

Stay-at-home mothers, caretakers for the ill, or anyone else unable to find the time to vote could benefit from the process, known as unconditional absentee voting, Nyman said.

Massachusetts would become the 27th state to allow unconditional absentee voting if the amendment is ratified. It requires support from a majority of House and Senate members this session and again in the 2007-2008 session and approval by voters on a referendum in 2008.

Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who oversees elections in Massachusetts, said he supports the change, but has yet to endorse the specifics of this proposal.

''I think it will help people who have very extensive schedules, and many people do," Galvin said.

The last half-century has seen a steady increase in absentee balloting, Galvin said, culminating in the sharp spike in the 2004 election, when his office had to print additional ballots.

Under the current system, voters who wish to cast an absentee ballot must submit an application to their city or town clerk. The clerks mail those voters the ballots, beginning four to six weeks before an election. Voters then mail them back or drop them off.

While voters must sign the ballots, and affirm under the pains of perjury that they cannot vote on Election Day because of a disability, travel, or religious restriction, the law is rarely enforced.

Brian McNiff, a spokesman for Galvin, said he could not recall the office ever levying the $10,000 fine on a voter who requested an absentee ballot but did not meet the stated requirements.

While the demand for absentee ballots has been driven in part by individual voters, another force is at work: political parties. State Democrats and Republicans have increasingly encouraged their most loyal voters to cast absentee ballots to ensure that their votes are counted. In the 2002 governor's race, the state Republican Party mailed absentee ballot application forms to all 550,000 registered Republicans in the state, said Dominick Ianno, the party's former executive director.

''It's been useful," Ianno said. ''It certainly was a key part of Mitt Romney's victory, in getting out the vote."

Operatives from both parties also regularly collect lists of the names and addresses of voters who have cast absentee ballots in past elections.

Those individuals, because they have gone to the trouble to request a ballot, are viewed as high-interest voters, and, as a result, are heavily courted by the party's machinery. They are targeted with prerecorded phone calls and mailings.

''The trick to this thing is the campaigns have to reach these people early," said the state Democratic Party chairman, Philip W. Johnston, who supports the amendment. ''You can't let absentee programs wait until the last few days."

Some local elections officials are concerned that they lack the staff, money, and machinery to process a potential flood of ballots arriving by mail, said Judith L. St. Croix, Wayland town clerk and first vice president of the Massachusetts Town Clerks' Association.

''It's all about who's going to pay for what," said St. Croix, adding that her association has yet to take a formal position. In the last presidential election, ''we did close to 1,000 absentee ballots, and we're just a little town," St. Croix said, ''so you can imagine what it would be like in the city of Boston or Fall River."

Secretary of State Trey Grayson of Kentucky is among a handful of state elections officials who have raised concerns about increased voting by mail. Grayson has been urging parents to take their children to the polls.

''I like the tradition of seeing the flags in front of the polling places and standing in line with voters," Grayson said. ''If you looked at the elections in Iraq, they all stood in line and voted and went through that experience."

''I think over time that traditions seems to be giving way," he added. ''Maybe I'm sort of a sentimentalist."