Introducing Electronic Poll Pads for Voter Check-In
This Post has been archived and its content might be outdated. If you are looking for recent content, please check this Department's Homepage.
Starting with the Special Town Meeting on Thursday, January 2, 2020, electronic Poll Pads will be used to check in voters at Town Meetings and for Early Voting. The Poll Pads will accelerate the Check-In process by eliminating the need for voters to line up by precinct and for election workers to flip through a paper list to check off addresses and names.
The use of these computer tablets will allow our election officers to check a voter in by either:
• Manually entering the first few letters of the voter’s first and last name OR
• Scanning the bar code on the back of the voter’s driver’s license. No information from the scanned license is retained by the Poll Pad. Please note, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts does not require that a voter present a license to check in at Town Meeting.
Please note that voters will now check in by name rather than by precinct as has been done in the past. Therefore, a voter may proceed to any available election officer in order to check in.
Please note, Electronic Poll Pads have not yet been authorized for use on Election Day, only for Town Meetings and during Early Voting.
The Poll Pads are not connected to Wi-Fi. They communicate via Bluetooth, syncing automatically and eliminating the possibility of a voter checking in more than once.
