Joe Biden’s resounding margin of victory in Massachusetts wasn’t the only reason Bay Staters had a clear view of their state’s election results Tuesday night.
While swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan continue to tally ballots in the tightly contested presidential election Wednesday afternoon, Massachusetts had already reported a vast majority of its votes by Tuesday night.
Despite the unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud by President Donald Trump, the reason for the delays comes down to some intricate differences in local ballot-processing rules implemented — or not implemented — to handle the unprecedented influx of mail-in ballots this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under a Massachusetts state law passed this year to expand mail-in and early voting during the pandemic, local elected officials could begin processing — or “pre-canvassing” — ballots as early as Oct 25.
Similar to the rules in Pennsylvania and Michigan, cities and towns in Massachusetts weren’t allowed to actually begin counting ballots until Tuesday. However, the emergency law allowed them to do things like remove mail-in ballots from the inner envelopes in which they’re required to be sent and cross-check names with voter lists. Officials say the change streamlined the eventual vote-counting process on election night.
“We certainly think it helped us,” Deb O’Malley, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Bill Galvin, told Boston.com over the phone Wednesday.
O’Malley said the provision was especially helpful for many Boston suburbs where there was a high volume, and that it had been something for which local clerks had advocated.
“They really wanted to be able to process the ballots ahead of time,” she said.
As of Tuesday morning, Massachusetts had received 2.3 million ballots through early and mail-in voting. The law also required all advance processing to be done in public view during sessions open to observers.
Other states, like Florida, which has a tradition of absentee voting and was called Tuesday night for Trump, have similar ballot-processing rules.
However, as many election experts predicted, the counting process has stretched on in certain bellwether states, largely due to a lack of similar ballot-processing rules, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf had pushed legislation to allow pre-canvassing of ballots. But those efforts stalled out after Republican state lawmakers bundled into the bill other measures, such as banning drop boxes, that the Democratic administration opposed.
For its part, Michigan did pass a law allowing officials in communities with more than 25,000 people to conduct the early processing of ballots during a 10-hour window Monday. However, according to the Detroit Free Press, some of the state’s largest cities chose not to take advantage of the option.
Local officials in Massachusetts will still need to update their tallies later this week to account for mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Tuesday but arrive as late as Friday. But as of Wednesday afternoon, nearly 99 percent of precincts had reported.
Meanwhile, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, close to 97 percent and 85 percent of precincts had reported, respectively. Both states remain too close to call.
During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Galvin declined to go so far as to say it was a “mistake” that those states did not adopt the similar ballot-processing rules as Massachusetts. But he added that “obviously I think it’s helpful to have more time.”
Galvin also noted that Massachusetts elections, while administered at the local level, have more centralized supervision through his office, in contrast to other states like Pennsylvania where municipal and county officials have more “autonomy.’
“That’s an unfortunate difference,” he said. “I think you need some uniformity of the law.”
Galvin’s office is also convening a working group with local clerks to determine what emergency changes this year should be made permanent for future elections.
During the press conference Wednesday, the Boston Democrat reiterated his support for keeping some form of no-excuse absentee — otherwise known as mail-in — voting. But he said the core principles of counting the ballots should be the same in Massachusetts and in states where the presidential race is still being more closely contested.
“The mere passage of time doesn’t change anything,” Galvin said. “If they voted during the time of the election, up until Election Day, they should be counted.”
