Thirty-seven states now provide some kind of opportunity for all registered voters to cast their ballots before Election Day. Massachusetts is the newest kid on the block with in-person "early voting" that started on Monday, October 24.
Louisiana and Texas permitted early voting in 1921. It's a slow moving trend, but it's definitely taking hold -- but not every state is heading in this direction.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, the city's Election Commissioner, Gladys Oyola, said she's been preparing for "the election before the election" since 2014. That's when then-Governor Deval Patrick signed early voting into Massachusetts law.
Just days before the state's first-ever election with early voting, staff offices -- where people will come to cast their ballots -- were under renovation.
Oyola was surrounded by staff answering phones and stuffing envelopes. Boxes of blank ballots (white labels for early voting, yellow for absentee) were piled almost to the ceiling, along with piles of voter information and voting equipment.
"What you see here is [usually] our back office," Oyola said, pointing around the crowded room. "I've been sounding the battle cry for the last two years, and I don't think [anyone] believed it was coming until --" Oyola said, pausing. "So here we are."
And Oyola opened a door onto a still rather raw public space. The front counter was being rebuilt, made longer for expected crowds in the law’s eleven days of early voting.
The floors were bare cement. A couple of spots still looked damp. Carpet would come in a day or two. A second door was being made accessible. Furniture would be moved back in, and signs hung.
The phones kept ringing every few minutes. People were still coming in, Oyola joked, if they can find the place, to see if it's too late to register to vote. On this day, it already was.
Then Oyola found a voter registration slipped under the door in the part of the office under construction. She handed it to one of the staff. They would try the contact number to let them know, they missed the deadline.
Despite the construction underway, Oyola said, "We've gotten great support," and volunteers and staff would work through the weekend to get ready.
"We're building it," Oyola said, and she like elections officials around Massachusetts wondered, will the voters come?
State officials told Oyola to expect about 15 percent of the total population of people who usually go to the polls on Election Day. In Springfield, that's about 9,000 early voters. Oyola said the ballots are put in a vault and tallied November 8.
Early voting procedures and potential complications were a big topic earlier this year when Springfield hosted a statewide conference for election clerks.
"As a group the clerks and commissioners have been a little trepidatious because it is new, we've never done this before," Oyola said.
There's almost a redundancy in Massachusetts with both absentee voting and early voting. Oyola said she'd like to see it become one "animal."
It's possible. Looking around at other states, it's evident how early voting can reduce long lines on busy election days. Some voters like it, so do some politicians. Many election officials say "do whatever it takes to get people to the polls."
So why isn't every state allowing for an early vote?
In New England, for instance, states may not technically offer early voting. But there are other ways to vote early.
Rhode Island and Connecticut don't have early voting laws per se, but over time, the definition of who qualifies for an absentee ballot has broadened.
Voters no longer need a complicated reason to get one, said Wendy Underhill, who tracks election policies for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
"In the case of Rhode Island," Underhill said, "it can be simply that the voter is not able to go to vote at the appropriate place on Election Day."
In Connecticut, Underhill read the requirements out loud: "It says, 'Will you be out of town during all the hours to vote on Election Day?'"
Still, when an early voting amendment question made it to the 2014 state ballot, Connecticut voters said, "No."
Further north, Underhill said the state of Maine has been back and forth on early voting since 1970. Elections officials have now settled on in-person absentee voting. So has Vermont.
One state stands out as showing almost no interest in an early voting law. Election officials in New Hampshire, so proud of its first in the nation primary, have for years been saying, early voting is not for them. New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner told New Hampshire Public Radio, a law is not needed in a state where voter turnout is high.
"You have a country to look at with fifty different laboratories and what I've seen [in New Hampshire] just affirms the process that we have here, and the turnout that we get here. And that's what it's all about," Gardener said.
For some, including Gardner, early voting diminishes the significance of Election Day itself.
On the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts, some registered voters felt likewise. But some weren't even aware they could vote early. George Cannon, who works and lives in Springfield, said for this year, he's sticking to the plan and voting November 8.
"I'm gonna go on the regular day," Cannon said, "just because I want to have the longest time to think about everything. Although I already know basically what I'm going to do. "
Cannon said he is definitely in favor of early voting. Anything, he said, that helps people get out to vote is a good thing.
This report comes from the New England News Collaborative: Eight public media companies coming together to tell the story of a changing region, with support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
