‘No surprises ... just a ton of voters.; local midterm election trends

Date: 11/22/2022

GREATER SPRINGFIELD – With the 2022 midterm elections in the rearview, Reminder Publishing reached out to area town clerks to discuss the main takeaways.

Participation

There was substantial turnout, with a mixture of early voting, mail-in ballots and Election Day voting.
“There were no surprises ... just a ton of voters,” said Longmeadow Town Clerk Timothy Donnolly. “Participation was way up – 7,198 votes cast, 58.9 percent.”

East Longmeadow Town Clerk Jeanne Quaglietti agreed. “We were pleased with the turnout that seemed to be average to what was reported by other clerks in Massachusetts.” Of the 12.918 registered voters in town, 7,036, or 54.5 percent, cast a ballot. Meanwhile, in Wilbraham, 6,733 voters – 59.5 percent of the electorate – cast ballots.

Hampden is a smaller community with 3,612 registered voters. Of them, 2,346, or 65 percent, voted in the 2022 midterm election.

“The turnout is always higher when there is no incumbent running, especially for a higher office,” said Hampden Town Clerk Eva Wiseman. “I think the expectation is that a candidate has a better chance of winning when the competition is all on the same playing field. It’s difficult to defeat an incumbent unless they’ve done something so blatant that the majority of voters were offended and no longer support them. That doesn’t happen very often. Just my opinion.”

Despite town clerks noting the high number of voters, turnout in the last midterm election was slightly higher, with 8,171 voters casting ballots in Longmeadow and 7,577 in East Longmeadow.

“It does seem that early voting is popular, as we received a very large amount of early vote ballots by mail and in-person,” Donnolly said. Quaglietti reported to the East Longmeadow Town Council that 29.5 percent of registered voters in town voted early. “It’s here to stay. After a 2014 law signed by then-Gov. Deval Patrick, early voting became available in 2016. Gov. Charlie Baker signed mail-in voting into law in June of this year. Each municipality sets its own early voting schedule, with a certain number of days and hours of operation available to residents. For more information on how early voting and mail-in ballots work, visit https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleev/evidx.htm.

Questions

There were four statewide questions included on the ballot. Question 1 asked whether to impose an additional 4 percent tax on income over $1 million. The revenue generated by the state constitution’s amendment would help fund education, roads, bridges and public transportation. While this question passed at the state level, voters in Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Wilbraham and Hampden voted against the item.

Question 2 required dental insurance companies to refund excess premiums to customers if the annual amount spent on dental expenses and quality improvements is less than 83 percent. All four of the towns we looked at voted in favor of this question, which also passed at the state level.

Question 3 would have increased the number of alcohol licenses a retailer could obtain, while also prohibiting self-checkout alcohol sales and allow out-of-state driver’s licenses as a valid form of identification when buying alcohol. This is the only question that did not pass at the state level. Likewise, the question was rejected in Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Wilbraham and Hampden.

Question 4 upheld a state law allowing people who cannot prove they are living in the U.S. legally to receive state driver’s licenses by showing proof of their identity and birth date. The law was passed by the state legislature in June, after an override of a veto by Gov. Charlie Baker. East Longmeadow, Wilbraham and Hampden voted against this question, while Longmeadow voted in favor of it, by just 220 votes. The question passed statewide, and the law was upheld.

While Longmeadow and East Longmeadow had a fair number of voters both in favor and against these four questions, Hampden’s tallies were veritable landslides, with far fewer than 1,000 votes for questions 1,3, and 4, and against question 2, the only ballot measure the town approved.

East Longmeadow and Wilbraham had the same two additional non-binding questions on its ballot. Question 5 asked if the district’s representative should be instructed to vote for legislation to create a single-payer, universal health care system for all Massachusetts residents, eliminating the role of insurance companies by creating a publicly administered insurance trust fund. The vote on this question was much closer than on other questions considered by town voters. In East Longmeadow, a total of 831 people voted for the measure and 722 voted against it. In Wilbraham, the measure passed by just 23 votes.

Question 6 asked if district’s representative should be instructed to vote in favor of changes to the applicable House of Representative rules to make each legislator’s committee vote publicly available on the legislature’s website. Wilbraham voters approved this question with 4,697 in favor and 1,181 opposed. Similarly, the voters in East Longmeadow overwhelmingly supported this ballot question, with 1,236 people in favor and 316 against it.