A proposal to sever the tie between the annual street list and voter registration status to reduce voting barriers in Massachusetts has the backing of voting rights advocates.
But it met resistance from the office in charge of summoning jurors and raised questions for the Senate’s election laws point person.
“As of 2024, the voter list was at 770,000 inactive voters — that’s 15% of the registered voters in Massachusetts,” state Rep. Shirley Arriaga, D-8th Hampden, told her colleagues last month. “Removing the link between the municipal census and voter registration ensures that access to the ballot is protected, is strengthened, and everyone in our community has that right [to vote].”
Existing law deems a voter “inactive” if they fail to respond to the annual street list, also often referred to as the municipal census.
House and Senate bills, respectively sponsored by Arriaga and Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem, D-Norfolk/Middlesex, seek to disrupt that relationship since “Massachusetts is in a minority of jurisdictions that tie voter registration to the municipal census,” according to Creem’s summary.
Evan Drukker, the field director at Massachusetts Voter Table, recalled moving from Somerville to Cambridge in February, but being out of town for weeks at a time in the process due to the death of a family member.
He missed the street list during that period and didn’t realize he was inactive until later on, he told the Legislature’s Joint Election Laws Committee.
“I voted in every election that I’ve ever been eligible for. I was inactive because life happens. People miss forms in the mail, and if this system is so harsh that the field director of the Massachusetts Voter Table can be listed as inactive because of an address change and a death in the family, it is standing in the way of everyday people in Massachusetts exercising their right to vote,” Drukker said.
Inactive voters are still able to vote, the Secretary of State’s office pointed out. Bringing identification to a polling location, where a voter can then fill out a form affirming their residence, allows an inactive voter to cast a ballot and get back on the active voter list.
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Annual Street List forms are sent out across Massachusetts at the beginning of each year, after which election officials will send a second mailing notice if there’s no response to the first.
A separate confirmation notice is sent out by the first week of June, deeming a voter inactive.
A voter’s status is reactivated once they return the mailing, fill out a new registration form, or submit anything to local election officials signed under penalty of perjury confirming their address.
A person is only removed from the voter rolls if they do not vote in two consecutive federal elections while inactive, Deborah O’Malley, a spokesperson for Secretary of State William Galvin, said.
But “even if you do get deleted for inactivity, you can cast a provisional ballot that will be counted if you can prove you haven’t moved out of the town you were once registered to vote in,” O’Malley continued.
Federal law requires a system for annual list maintenance; state law says Massachusetts completes the maintenance through the municipal census.
Voting rights advocates maintain that being unknowingly placed on an inactive list is a hurdle to voting access.
Some, like Pastor “Keke” Dieufort Fleurissaint, told lawmakers that immigrant households are “hesitant, especially in this climate, to respond to census questions that go beyond the scope of voter registration, fearing that their information could be misused or put them at risk.”
The connection between the municipal census and voter registration is one of the several voting barriers that “continue to disenfranchise marginalized communities” across the state, he said.
“A large number of residents of cities and towns don’t even know that not responding demotes them as a voter,” Geoff Foster, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, added.
“We know that expecting a voter to provide some sort of proof of residency alone can be a major barrier to voting — not everyone has readily on their person at any given moment an ID,” Foster said.
Language in the proposal suggests that the street census envelope should inform households that failure to respond “may result in a fine,” which written testimony from Jury Commissioner Pamela Wood suggested could impact census results, which are used for juror summoning in Massachusetts.
“While the imposition of a fine might persuade some residents to respond to the municipal census, the imposition of a fine might be construed by some residents as a fee they are willing to pay if it may lead to their not be included on a resident list and therefore, not eligible to be summoned for juror service,” Wood wrote.
“Where the proposed bill does not set forth the fine amount or the consequences for failure to pay a fine, and also makes fine assessment discretionary, it is unclear how the implementation of the proposed bill will affect municipal census response rates and therefore, the quality of the [Office of the Jury Commissioner’s] juror lists,” she continued.
Foster and Arriaga said the potential of a fine already exists in state law.
“There’s a separate state law … which already grants municipal registrars the ability to compel people to return information by issuing a fine. And so what the bill is really doing, it’s not changing [the] rules, it’s simply replacing what’s on the envelope that’s getting mailed out by local government officials,” Foster told State House News Service. “Instead of ‘Hey, you’re going to become inactive,’ it simply changes that language to reflect Chapter 56 Section 4.”
Foster added that he’s not aware of the fine being wielded often, if ever, and Arriaga said she plans to take another look at the legislation to make sure a “punitive” fine isn’t placed on constituents.
The Election Laws Committee’s Senate chair, Sen. John Keenan, D-Norfolk/Plymouth, told the wire service that he wants “to look at this decoupling issue to make sure that if we decouple them, that we still end up with current, reliable [lists]. So I’ve still got a little more work to do on that one. And that comes down to, we’re always in discussion with local clerks.”
Asked how households could be compelled to respond to the census if there are no consequences for not doing so, Foster suggested “Municipal governments do a better job at educating the public about the importance of the Annual Street List.”
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