By Tucker Paquette
@tpaquette17
With the 2024 presidential election and numerous other political races intensifying, this is an exciting time for Springfield College students to be able to make their voices heard.
However, many of those same students may be wondering: Since I live on a college campus, how exactly can I cast my vote?
Luckily for them, a tool is in place to solve that exact problem: absentee voting.
Absentee ballots allow people to vote by mail, a process that is very helpful for those who are unable to vote in-person at the polls for whatever reason.
According to The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to be eligible for an absentee ballot, someone must have either a religious belief that makes them unable to go to their polling location, a disability that prevents them from voting in-person or they must be away from their home on Election Day.
For most students, proximity to home will be the driving force behind their choice to vote absentee.
To apply for a ballot, someone first must be registered to vote. After that, they can send in their absentee ballot requests via mail, email or fax, and they can also send a handwritten letter to the election office nearest to them. However, all absentee ballot requests must be complete with a signature that looks similar to their hand-written signature.
The deadline to register to vote in Massachusetts is Oct. 26. A complete list of nationwide voter registration deadlines can be found at Vote.org. All requests for an absentee ballot in Massachusetts must be submitted by Oct. 29 at 5 p.m., but this deadline varies across the country, too. Here is a full list of ballot request deadlines.
If a voter’s application isn’t in to their local election office by their state’s date and time, they will not get their ballot. For this reason, people are encouraged to request their absentee ballot well in advance of the election. This way, ample time is allowed for their vote to be delivered via mail, and there is minimal risk of someone not receiving their ballot in time to vote.
Once a voter gets their ballot and has filled it out, they then return it. There are severalways one can do this: they can mail it back in the envelope they received with the ballot, bring it to their local election office or place their ballot in a designated drop-box where they live. Typically, a ballot needs to be at a voter’s local election office by the time polls close on Election Day.
This process has been a significant help for Springfield College students from near and far who want to participate in the voting process, but otherwise wouldn’t be able to do so.
One such student is Olivia Gentry, a junior from Cincinnati, Ohio. Gentry has voted absentee a couple of times, and while she acknowledges the system isn’t perfect, she still believes it is a valuable asset for students.
“The experience of absentee voting is a little difficult, in terms of trying to get the forms and making sure everything is in on time,” Gentry said. “But I knew it was important for me to have that option.”
Gentry thinks a main reason why absentee voting isn’t a more common practice is because too many people are simply unaware it’s an option. However, more discussion of its benefits may lead to more people taking advantage of the opportunity to cast an absentee ballot.
“There is a lot of unknown about absentee voting, because it’s something we’re not really taught about,” Gentry said. “We’re taught about in-person voting. A lot of people don’t know how to get [their absentee ballot], and how to go online and register. I think it’s important that people get the information they need in order to obtain the knowledge of absentee voting.”
(Photo courtesy of WBUR)