SEEKONK, Mass. (WPRI) – Early voting for this year’s presidential election has been getting rave reviews in Massachusetts.
On Saturday, dozens of residents showed up at Seekonk Town Hall – usually quiet on a Saturday – to cast their ballots.
“We’ve had over 700 people early vote so far,” said Seekonk Town Clerk Jan Parker. “We have over 10,000 registered voters, so between the early voters and the absentee voters, we’ve had over 10 percent of people vote already in Seekonk.”
Early voting started on Oct. 24 and will run through Nov. 4. Voters can cast their ballots at Town Hall between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Election Day is Nov. 8.
The ability to vote on Saturday was a welcome surprise to some.
“They gave a lot of opportunity a lot of different dates a lot of times,” Donna Armell said. “I didn’t think they’d have Saturday voting, and here we are Saturday morning. It’s perfect.”
One other benefit of voting early: no Election Day lines to contend with.
“I was in and out in literally 30 seconds so this was definitely a quicker process than normally. I’m actually going to be traveling on Nov. 8 so I wasn’t going to be around, so this is a very convenient thing,” voter Michael Lastrina said.
According to the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office, as of Thursday more than 288,000 people had already voted statewide, out of a total of 4,534,974 registered voters. More details on early voting in Massachusetts are available at the secretary of state’s website.
Rhode Island is not one of the 37 states which allow early voting, though the state does offer no-excuse mail ballots.
