{"id":2128,"date":"2025-09-05T16:44:33","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T20:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/massachusetts\/?post_type=press&#038;p=2128"},"modified":"2025-09-05T16:44:33","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T20:44:33","slug":"advocates-revive-push-for-same-day-voter-registration-other-election-reforms","status":"publish","type":"press","link":"https:\/\/www.commoncause.org\/massachusetts\/press\/advocates-revive-push-for-same-day-voter-registration-other-election-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Advocates revive push for same-day voter registration, other election reforms"},"template":"","class_list":["post-2128","press","type-press","status-publish","hentry","press_type-news-clip"],"acf":{"details":{"summary":"","featured_image":"","press_type":155,"authors":"","related_issues":[462],"related_work":false,"location":24},"sidebar":{"helper_enable_sidebar":false,"helper_media_contact":{"heading":"Media Contact","manually_enter_person":false,"person":"","name":"","role":"","phone":"","email":""},"helper_links_downloads":{"heading":"Links & Downloads","links":null}},"page_layout":[{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_wysiwyg","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_wysiwyg":{"content":"<strong><em>Originally published in GBH News on September 3, 2025. Read the original article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wgbh.org\/news\/politics\/2025-09-03\/advocates-revive-push-for-same-day-voter-registration-other-election-reforms\">here.\u00a0<\/a><\/em><\/strong>\r\n\r\nWith preliminary municipal elections less than a week away, a group of election reform advocates rallied outside Boston City Hall Wednesday, urging state lawmakers to take up a trio of bills they said would strengthen voting access across Massachusetts.\r\n\r\nThe bills include one that would allow for same-day voter registration, an issue that Massachusetts\u2019 chief election official, Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin, has been advocating for publicly recently.\r\n\r\n\u201cWith voting rights under attack by the federal government, now is the time for us to pass same-day voter registration in Massachusetts,\u201d said state Rep. Carmine Gentile, who is sponsoring a version of the bill in the lower chamber. \u201cIn Massachusetts, we have a history of strengthening and safeguarding our democracy. Enabling everyone who has the right to vote to exercise that right on Election Day is long overdue.\u201d\r\n\r\nGentile was joined by about three dozen other advocates affiliated with the civic engagement nonprofit MassVote and the Election Modernization Coalition arranged by the government accountability group Common Cause.\r\n\r\nAccording to recent data from the National Conference of State Legislatures, 23 states and Washington, D.C., have implemented same-day registration, which allows any qualified resident to register to vote and cast a ballot at the same time. Twenty of those states, as well as D.C., allow registration to happen on Election Day.\r\n\r\nRight now in Massachusetts, voters can register or make modifications to their registration as late as 10 days before an election. The idea of same-day registration almost gained traction when lawmakers enacted other election reforms in 2022, but ultimately it was left out.\r\n\r\n<strong>\u201cWe did hear some concerns,\u201d said Common Cause Massachusetts Executive Director Geoff Foster, noting that lawmakers at the time had questions about implementation, costs and impacts to local elections.<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<strong>\u201cI am extremely excited that Secretary Galvin has been so emphatically supportive of this reform in the last few weeks,\u201d Foster said. \u201cHe sees local election officials and understands what they\u2019re doing day in and day out, probably better than anyone and the fact that he\u2019s able to say right now is the time to do it, we\u2019re really excited about that.\u201d<\/strong>\r\n\r\nMultiple speakers said Wednesday that some 3,300 provisional ballots from Election Day 2024 were rejected, with a third of them coming from the City of Boston. Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts President Rahsaan Hall pointed to the city\u2019s status as one of the most diverse in New England.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat does that say about our democracy?\u201d Hall asked, adding that advocates are seeking to ensure access for racial and ethnically diverse communities, for the transient population of students who live in Greater Boston and for \u201cpeople who are living on the margins of poverty, who can\u2019t afford to stay long-term in one location but are very concerned and interested and invested\u201d in local elections.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey should not be a part of that 33% because of an arbitrary cutoff,\u201d Hall continued. \u201cWe need to make sure that we are focusing on Boston. That is why we are here at the steps of City Hall, to underscore the point.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnother bill would separate voter registration from a municipal census, a policy that Hall noted affected him one year when he missed the census.\r\n\r\n\u201cNow that\u2019s me, someone with an aptitude and focus towards civic engagement,\u201d he said. \u201cThink about all of the people who, they think voting is important, but they\u2019re not gonna take the time or the steps to go through all of that because of the complications of life. We need to decouple that municipal census from the voter registration rolls.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe shift to same-day registration and the decoupling of voter registration from the municipal census could present an additional challenge for Boston, which is undergoing multiple changes while under state receivership managed by Galvin\u2019s office. Advocates said they\u2019re confident officials can still make these reforms.\r\n\r\n\u201cAside from a few administrative issues in the City of Boston, they have demonstrated their ability to execute elections, and so I think the added scrutiny will be helpful,\u201d Hall said.<i>\u00a0<\/i>\r\n\r\nThe third bill the group promoted Wednesday would enforce accessibility for voters with disabilities by mandating the secretary of state\u2019s office conduct polling accessibility check-ups every four years to ensure compliance with applicable federal and state laws.\r\n\r\nThe group is scheduled to testify about their bills before the Legislature\u2019s Joint Committee on Election Laws on Sept. 16 at 1 p.m."}},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_add_component","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_add_component":null},{"acf_fc_layout":"layout_work","_acfe_flexible_toggle":"","component_work":{"heading":"Work","manually_curate":false,"work":null}}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.6 (Yoast SEO v27.1.1) - 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