By Eric Robinson
Massachusetts election reform bill, HB 3788, is currently being considered by the state House after passing the Senate, 37-1. At this point, the bill offers many reforms to Massachusetts voting which expand the voting rights of Massachusetts, including early voting, online voter registration, pre-registration for 16-year-olds, post-election audits of voting machines, and inactive voting reform.
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However, HB 3788 has received criticism for not doing enough to help.
“What they passed is typical of what you would see in politics today,” independent gubernatorial candidate Evan Falchuk said in an interview, ”which are a series of measures which are unobjectionable and aren’t going to alter anything significant with the way voting works.”
One problem is that some of the reforms simply don’t increase voter turnout.
“There are studies that show that early voting, generally, is taken advantage of by people who will vote anyway and online voter registration does help some amount with increasing voter registration, but it doesn’t fundamentally alter the number of people who vote,” Falchuk said.
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