Voter registration deadline Oct 19

[cos]

To vote for Somerville Board of Aldermen this November 8th, if you're not already registered to vote in Somerville, you need to register by Wednesday at 8pm. You can register in person at the Somerville Elections Department, downstairs in city hall at the corner of Highland and School Street. They're open 8:30-4:30 today and tomorrow, and staying open until 8pm on Wednesday.

You can also pick up a form at any city hall in Massachusetts and mail it to Somerville, just make sure it's postmarked by Wednesday. If you fill out the form on your own, make sure to:

- check both boxes in part 1 (you're a citizen; you're gonna be over 18 on election day)
- include your identification number, which is either your drivers license number or the last four digits of your social security number (not the whole thing)
- pick a party affiliation - or "no party (unenrolled)"

Those are the three things people miss most often, and if you miss any of them, they'll ask you to register again, and you'll miss the deadline. Also, if you get your mail at some address other than your actual residence (like some dorms, for example), pay attention to the two address lines, one for where you actually reside, the other for where you get mail.

BTW, there's a trend in MA of lots of generally Democratic voters registering as "unenrolled" because you can vote in any primary. I think it's a bad idea. If you care who the Democratic nominee for governor is going to be, for example, you may want to participate in the caucuses this spring, or the convention next summer, and you can't do either of those if you're not registered as a Democrat. If you care who's on the Democratic State Committee, or if you might ever want to join a town committee to help reform the party, you need to be registered Democrat. You may not know yet that you'll want to do any of these things, but there are a whole bunch of things you cut yourself off from doing if you register unenrolled, and it sucks if for example someone you know runs for delegate and asks you to help her by going to caucus and you're not eligible. On the flip side, what do you gain by being unenrolled? Just how often is there actually a contested Republican primary or Libertarian primary (you can't register Green currently) for any seat in this state? Realistically, in today's Massachusetts, almost every primary election that you'd want to vote in is a Democratic one.

This year, Davis Square has a chance to elect Rebekah Gewirtz, founding chair of Progressive Democrats of Somerville (and former legislative aide to Pat Jehlen) as its new ward alderman. PDS has also endorsed several other candidates for at-large and ward seats this year.

Comments

[cos]

Not replying to the city census changes your voter status to "inactive", but I think the only effect of that is that they ask you to show ID at the polls, like they do for first time voters. But perhaps that was it, if someone wasn't aware that "inactive" status came from not responding to the census, had just moved out of town, went to the polls and told "you're inactive, got ID?" - they might assume it's because they just moved out, and might even tell the poll worker that, and the poll worker might not know that can't be the reason.