Across Massachusetts, officials managing elections feel the pressure to get everything right — and that pressure is higher than ever. The rise in mail-in and early voting have increased the workload, and misinformation has fed public skepticism about election integrity.
“It’s a huge lift,” said Joe Vizard, clerk for the city of Waltham.
The town clerks in charge of local elections are often familiar faces, the same people who issue dog licenses and show up at local meetings but, increasingly, their job also requires taking precautions to stay safe and working to rebuild trust among people skeptical about election integrity.
GBH News went inside the office of four Massachusetts town clerks to get a view from the front lines of election 2024.
Kickboxing class?
Personal security was the focus of a recent International Institute of Municipal Clerks’ training, according to Amanda Haggstron, Lynnfield’s town clerk.
Her training included a course on kickboxing.
“We had so many different classes on how to protect yourself, not how to conduct an election,” said Haggstron.
She said her office has heard from a lot of voters who are concerned about the voting process.
“When they’re hearing about these different things on the news, in different media with no basis behind it, and no facts — and they come to this office thinking we’re out to get them — it’s really really hard,” she said.
Safety concerns heightened at town clerks’ offices after a suspicious envelope sent to the Massachusetts Secretary of State last month was intercepted. It included a substance that turned out to be harmless, but in other states there have been instances of fentanyl being mailed to election offices. Now election officials across the country are being urged to stock Narcan — a medicine that reverses drug overdoses — in their offices.
Haggstrom is left wondering: “Is my family not safe because of my job?”
“I’m not a police officer, not an EMT,” she said. “I never considered that something that I would deal with.”
'Love notes’
In Holliston, voters have returned postcards offering mail-in ballots not to request a ballot but to express their anger.
“We call them 'love notes,' when they return these and they write on it, ‘I do not, I did not, I do not ever want to vote by mail,’” said Elizabeth Greendale, Holliston’s town clerk. “And sometimes there’s some choice words on that.”
Greendale said she’s been asked by people who come to vote in person why they have people putting ballots in the box all day. Her response: mail-in ballots require someone to stand in for the voter, and put the ballot through the tabulator on behalf of the voter.
“It’s nothing that’s being done secretively. It’s all being done out in the open. Everybody can watch the process,” said Greendale, who is also president of the Massachusetts Town Clerks Association.
”Your town and city clerk is working for you and working hard, and they take their job very seriously,” said Greendale. ”And you should trust in those clerks.”
No ‘vast conspiracy’
In Waltham, city clerk Joe Vizard has seen more people coming in to watch ballots being processed than during previous elections.
“Most of the time when they come, they leave satisfied,” he said, “If they come sit and watch us, they realize, ‘Hey, this is just your friends, family and neighbors trying to, you know, get through the election together’ and that it’s not, you know, that there isn’t all this craziness going on that they hear about on the news.”
Vizard rejects concerns about the accuracy of voting machines, pointing out that machines in his community are tested before the election begins and that past checking of paper ballots against machine results showed they’re accurate.
“We want everyone to be able to vote,” said Vizard. “And it’s not a vast conspiracy, it’s not me and my team trying to deprive you of your vote.”
Retirees have always been a reliable group to fill poll worker positions but he says many have stopped working the polls because of the increased workload and scrutiny. Now, finding people to work elections in a year round job.
“The nature of elections becoming more contentious - certainly everyone feels that. The poll workers feel that, the police working security at the elections feel that,” said Vizard.
He makes a point of thanking his election workers and thinks everyone else should, too.
“We don’t have democracy,” he said “if people won’t work the elections.”
Be patient
“In Massachusetts and in our town, it’s very secure,” said Donna McCoy, Billerica’s town clerk,” So I think they can, you know, feel comfortable voting and not worry about the ballots being counted or, you know, being lost, whatever their situation is.”
McCoy anticipates this year’s turnout will exceed the turnout of the 2020 presidential election. In reliably blue Massachusetts, just over 44% of Billerica voters cast ballots for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. She said this year’s election is bringing out many voters for both sides. In the last presidential election Billerica had about an 80% turnout, and she’s expecting to see slightly above that.
“Be patient when you go,” she said, “you will get to vote and your vote will be safe and it’ll be counted.”
Still she worries about what may come next.
“I’m concerned about maybe a dispute after the elections, but currently in the moment, I have to think in the moment and work through this, get this to where I need to be on Election Day,” said McCoy, “and then, you know, if that comes up, then we’ll cover that when the time comes.”
