The Legislature is poised this session to permanently adopt the mail-in and early voting system that was put in place during the pandemic, hearing from advocates and state election officials Tuesday on how best to turn the emergency experiment into law.
Beyond codifying mail-in voting, bills heard by the Election Laws committee would also allow voter registration on election day, institute more thorough post-election audits and provide voting information to prisoners eligible to vote.
"It would make the mail-in-voting and early voting expansions made during COVID, make those permanent, but would also bring same day registration to Massachusetts," said Geoff Foster from Common Cause Massachusetts in an interview. "It would make improvements to our election infrastructure, like updating the automatic voter registration law from 2018."
Auditor Suzanne Bump told the committee the state will need to provide more funding to cities and towns to deal with the new administrative workload to make voting by mail and early voting possible for every election.
