If you voted yesterday in the State primaries... you might have been surprised like me - I thought I would also be casting a vote for the Natick Select Board seat that sits open...
But, because of laws beyond anyone's control - Natick has to hold another election next week for an uncontested race on Tuesday September 13th. Voting information here.
I'm told that years ago Natick had to hold PRIMARIES because there were often so many people who wanted to run in the elections. Sigh. I'm always grateful to anyone who will run and am happy to cast a vote next Tuesday - but I'd like to hope we have some contested races in March.
Correction: After publishing the blog, thanks to my readers, I learned that the above is incorrect:
- The Select Board, by town charter, can have a vacancy until the next election (March 2023), they may call for a special election themselves or be required to call for a special election if 200 people sign a petition calling for one.
- The special election could have happened on the same day as the state primary election but would have required separate ballots.
- Running 2 elections in 1 day would have required voters to check in once for the state election and a 2nd time at a 2nd table for the local election.
- In this memo from the Town Clerk to the select board, they received a recommendation that it would not be easy to run both elections on the same day. She explained her memo in the meeting on April 20th.
- See the discussion by the Select Board during the April 20th meeting here at minute 1:04 the Town Clerk explains that it is possible to run the elections at the same time and describes that there would need to be two check ins.
- She cautioned that the State primaries are partisan elections and our local elections are not and that the people who vote in that election tend to be vested in one party or the other.
- Holding the special election with the November State election would put the election very close to the time to pick up papers for the March election and the Select board was concerned about the vacancy being open for so long.
- In the discussion, the consensus was to fill the vacancy sooner than later while avoiding the summer.
- Additionally, early voting and vote by mail would need to be offered which increases the difficulty in terms of labor.
- There was a discussion about the difficulty of timing if a preliminary election being needed, in this case if 3 people entered the race.
- The Clerk estimated the cost of the a special election - in very rough numbers - between 40 and 50K assuming it was not held at the same time as another election. (around minute 1:15) Cost includes, poll workers, police detail, early voting, mail ins, ballot printing and programming our voting machines.
And... what's going on with the South Natick Dam? There's a meeting tonight! 5-7 p.m.