The Clerk’s Office conducted an advanced removal of ballots on Saturday morning that was open for the public to observe, a few days ahead of the March 5 presidential primaries.
The plan was to initially conduct both the advanced removal, where the voted ballots are removed from their envelopes and flattened out to prepare them for scanning, and the advanced depositing, where the voted ballots are fed into a tabulator machine and the votes are counted.
However, according to Town Clerk Amanda Haggstrom, the actual number of voted ballots that they had at the time were less than they expected, so they opted to solely do an advanced removal that day.
“We still opted to do advanced removal, because that part of the process is very time consuming,” Haggstrom said. “We processed approximately 1,000 ballots on Saturday and it took about five hours just to check them into the poll pads, and to open the envelopes and flatten the ballots.”
According to an email sent by the Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, voter turnout as of Monday morning was 9.8%.
According to Haggstrom, all of the ballots that were removed in advance on Saturday were separated by party, batched in packs of 50, and sealed in containers for the clerks and wardens to feed through the machines on election day.
Three other election staff members — Wendy Larovere, Melissa Ripley, and Assistant Town Clerk Sue Lagorio — were with Haggstrom. To ensure privacy, there were makeshift table barriers separating election workers from the public.
“Barriers are always required during any sort of tallying or tabulation processes where ballots are present to protect the secrecy of each voter’s ballot.” Haggstrom said.
Haggstrom says that while nothing is set in stone, similar processes might happen for the other upcoming elections, such as the annual town election on April 9, and the state and federal election on Nov. 5, depending on how many early voted ballots they receive.
