The last day to register to vote in Massachusetts was Wednesday, and the deadline saw a flurry of activity in town halls across the Island.
“I’m working fast and furious,” reported Edgartown town clerk Wanda Williams yesterday morning. Ms. Williams said nearly 60 new voters registered in Edgartown on Wednesday. Because she is still entering figures, the town clerk was unable to report the new total number of registered voters in town at press time.
After the polling irregularities in Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, which saw George W. Bush come to office, David Earnhart did nothing. But when it was repeated in 2004, he could not let it pass again.
“A lot of people were angry in 2004,” Mr. Earnhart said this week from his office in Nashville. “But where most everybody else moved on, I didn’t.”
In what has become a fiercely contested primary battle, Vineyarders rushed to register last week in time to vote in the Massachusetts Democratic and Republican primary elections, scheduled for “Super Duper,” “Tsunami,” or even “Destiny” Tuesday, Feb. 5.
That day will feature the biggest one-day collection of state primaries and caucuses ever held in the United States.
Vineyard voters in the state election this week overwhelmingly said
yes to a study of their county charter and swept two new members onto
the Dukes County commission, but expressing a measured mandate for
change, also returned two incumbents to the regional governing board.
The nation may be split down the middle after Tuesday's presidential election, but the Vineyard was anything but divided when it came to casting ballots for Democrats.
Voters on Martha's Vineyard came out in droves Tuesday, and by margins as wide as three to one, they threw their support behind Sen. John Kerry, the unsuccessful presidential contender, and sent incumbent Democrats back to the Massachusetts Legislature in the face of Republican challenges.
Sturdy brown envelopes, some of them mailed from as far away as the Netherlands, Italy and Russia, are stacked up tall on the desk of Wanda Williams, the town clerk in Edgartown.
Ask Ms. Williams or any of the Island's other five town clerks how things are going the week before Election Day, and you'll hear a deep sigh. They are swamped, not only with a surge of those brown envelopes containing absentee ballots but also with tallying up new voters.