Massachusetts voter registration

By: Jared Mullen

As the final votes are counted following the 2018 midterms, attention inevitably shifts to 2020 and the presidential primaries. In Massachusetts, that will mean a new automatic voter registration (AVR) system, which will automatically register any citizen who completes a transaction at the Registry of Motor Vehicles or signs up for MassHealth, a state insurance provider. The AVR system, which was signed into law by Governor Charlie Baker in August 2018, also allows the Secretary of State to expand the program to other state social agencies once state employees verify that they collect the requisite information to register voters. Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, estimates that AVR could bring 500,000 new voters on to the rolls in the state. Common Cause estimates that there are approximately 650,000 Massachusetts residents who are not registered to vote despite being eligible.

By: Erik Gerstner

“The right to vote is the most fundamental of all,” wrote Suffolk Superior Court Justice Douglas Wilkins on July 25, 2017, in Chelsea Collaborative v. Galvin, in which he declared the Commonwealth’s law imposing a voter registration cutoff twenty days before an election to fall afoul of the Massachusetts Constitution. A case spearheaded by the ACLU, Chelsea Collaborative sought to end the nearly twenty-five year old law, which according to the plaintiffs disenfranchised thousands of eligible voters each election cycle. Indeed, according to the Boston Globe, nearly 20% of eligible voters said they were not registered to vote because they had missed the early cutoff date. According to precedent set over a century ago in Kineen v. Wells¸ 11 N.E. 916 (Mass. 1887), any legislation diminishing the rights of a constitutionally qualified citizen to vote “must be unconstitutional, unless it can be defended on the ground that it is reasonable and necessary.” Wilkins agreed with the plaintiffs that the current law clearly is neither reasonable nor necessary, and thus must be struck down.

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