This shares my conversation with Town Clerk Nancy Danello. We met in the Town Clerk office in the Franklin Municipal Building to discuss the overall election process. The overall process is functionally the same for the State Primary and for the regular November election. The cutoff dates, the early voting dates, and the election dates will change but the process remains basically the same. 

We cover the following key topics

• Vote by mail and early voting now permanent per State legislation
• “Independent” voters need to check the box for which primary ballot they want (Democrat or Republican, don’t need to make that choice for the November election)
• If you are registered with a party and you want the other party's primary ballot, checking the box is not sufficient. You need to submit a “part change form” to get the other party ballot. 
• Vote by mail process walked through, similar to in person voting whether early or day of
• Validation of machine tallies to be scheduled
• Only the total of voters casting ballots are tallied each day of early voting
• Early and absentee ballots to be process during the Primary day
• Vote totals at the close Primary Day will be “unofficial” until certified within the next 3 days to become official vote results

The show notes include links to the Town Clerk page and other election information.

Our conversation runs about 28 minutes, so let’s listen in to my conversation with Nancy.

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Town Clerk’s page ->  https://www.franklinma.gov/town-clerk 

Register to vote ->   https://www.sec.state.ma.us/OVR/ 

State Primary early voting schedule  ->  https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/news/state_primary_early_voting_schedule.pdf 

Vote by mail process diagram -> https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/news/vote_by_mail_process.pdf 

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If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

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