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April 14, 2026 Clouds | 77°F
The 194th General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Bill S.534 194th (Current)

An Act upgrading elections infrastructure, improving voting access, and reducing municipal burden

By Ms. Rausch, a petition (accompanied by bill, Senate, No. 534) of Rebecca L. Rausch and Joanne M. Comerford for legislation to upgrade elections infrastructure, improve voting access, and reduce municipal burden. Election Laws.

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Bill Information

Presenter:
Rebecca L. Rausch
This bill would make several sorely needed improvements to voting access and elections infrastructure, supporting voters while simultaneously reducing the operational and fiscal burdens on municipalities and local clerks. Provisions include: (1) a permanent mail voter option, consistent with operations in several other mail voting states and avoiding unnecessary costs and voter confusion; (2) a centralized website for preliminary primary and general election results, to be publicly viewable immediately after input; (3) requiring the Secretary to send out mail ballots, rather than ballots being sent to local clerks and then clerks subsequently issuing ballots to voters, alleviating the need for each and every town and city clerk in the state to effectively become a mail house; (4) changing the voter registration deadline from 10 to 7 days ahead of an election, to avoid the final registration day always falling on a Saturday, which necessitates overtime pay and additional work burdens; (5) changing the state primary date to the second Tuesday in June, consistent with most other states that hold traditional primaries, avoiding the persistent necessity of moving the September primary date; (6) adjusting early in-person voting hours to be proportional to the population of a municipality; and (7) expanding the mail ballot return deadline to 7 days after the election, so Massachusetts voters attending school on the West Coast or otherwise needing to vote from far-away states are not disenfranchised or denied their rights.
* The bill summary was created by the Primary Sponsor of the bill; no committee of the General Court certifies the accuracy of its contents.

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