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Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
'Denying people's voices': Quintal files bill to change mail-in ballot rules after recount
After both the official voting results and a recount failed to secure him an election victory, former Republican State Representative candidate and current Taunton City Councilor Larry Quintal said he has filed legislation in the state senate to amend current mail-in ballot policies. The legislation, submitted July 9 by State Senator Kelly Dooner, would require mail-in ballots postmarked by the day of the election to be counted in special elections, according to a press release issued by Quintal. 'Like all by-request legislation, I filed this bill at the request of a constituent. It's important that residents and local officials in my district have the opportunity to bring their ideas forward through the legislative process,' said Dooner, in an email statement, on why she chose to file legislation from her former co-City Councilor. Why this legislation? The initial official results of the June 10 special state election race for State Representative showed Democrat Lisa Field winning by 17 votes. A recount held on June 30, 2025, in Easton and July 2, 2025, in Taunton, narrowed the gap to 15 votes, but Field still retained the majority and remained the victor. Quintal said Taunton's Elections Office disqualified 20 mail-in ballots because the ballots were not received by the office before the deadline. 'In my race, 20 Tauntonians were denied their voice.' Over in Easton, Denise Morgan, principal clerk for Easton's Town Clerk's Office, told The Gazette that five mail-in ballots were disqualified from the election for not being received in time. Marc Pacheco, director of elections for Taunton's Elections Department, confirmed the disqualified 20 mail-in ballots. He said, when it comes to special elections, per state law, all voting ballots submitted by mail must be received by the city or town clerk prior to the closing of polls, which was 8 p.m., on the day of the election held on June 10. Those 20 mail-in ballots were not received by the elections office in time to be counted. 'The law is clear and we followed the law.' Furthermore, in a June 12 press release after the special election, Pacheco said, 'The only other ballots that could possibly be counted after election day for a special state election would be provisional ballots and ballots postmarked from overseas,' said Pacheco. In a written statement Quintal said the legislation filed aims to amend Massachusetts General Law Chapter 54 section 25B to bring it in line with the counting of ballots in November state elections. 'It makes no sense that ballots for November state elections are counted up to four days afterwards while in a special election they are tossed aside. We should not be denying people's voices in a state special election by treating them differently from a normal state election,' he said. State representative district covers parts of Easton, Taunton The 3rd Bristol District consists of parts of Taunton and parts of Easton: Easton: Precincts 4A, 5, and 6 Taunton: Ward 1 Precincts A, B, Ward 2, Ward 5, Ward 7 and Ward 8 A secure system Pacheco said the 20 disqualified mail-in ballots, per state requirements, 'are still sealed in their outer secrecy envelope. No one but these voters themselves know who they voted for.' When reached for comment, Holly Robichaud, who handles communication for Quintal, said there is no definitive way of knowing the voting results of the disqualified ballots. 'The 20 mail-in ballots remain sealed. However, 20 is more than the margin in this race. If they had been counted, they could have changed the results,' she said via email. Pacheco also said there is no pattern or way of deducing how many certified mail-in ballots voted for either Quintal or Field due to how the voting system works. 'Vote by mail ballots and absentee ballots are separated from their outer secrecy envelopes and placed into the ballot optical scanner and vote tabulator in the same manner that election day ballots are cast. Therefore, there is no way to know who voted for which candidate,' he said. For future elections Robichaud said the legislation isn't an attempt to overturn the election results. 'We cannot go back retroactively,' she said, adding that the legislation is about ensuring that mail-in ballots for special elections are counted and have the same boundaries as with state elections. That being said, Robichaud did acknowledge that 'Larry [Quintal] is seriously considering running again' in the 2026 election for State Rep., and 'We believe that he would win in a regular election where all the ballots are counted.' Moving forward Lisa Field declined to comment on Quintal's proposed legislation or press release. She was sworn in as 3rd Bristol District's new State Representative on Wednesday, July 16. "I am very excited to get to work on behalf of the constituents of the 3rd Bristol." With additional reporting from Emma Rindlisbacher This article originally appeared on The Taunton Daily Gazette: Larry Quintal files legislation regarding mail-in voting special elections Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Passing $61.4 bil budget, Senate plans to 'go forward and we'll see'
BOSTON (SHNS) – On the same day the U.S. House approved a sweeping package of tax relief and funding cuts that could impact state finances, the Massachusetts Senate approved an annual state budget that presses ahead with a sizable spending increase. The Senate voted 38-2 on a roughly $61.4 billion spending plan for fiscal year 2026, capping off three days of deliberations in which senators tacked on tens of millions of additional dollars and wove in a handful of major policy riders like prescription drug price controls and liquor license reforms. Republican Sens. Kelly Dooner of Taunton and Ryan Fattman of Sutton cast the two no votes. Elected officials on Beacon Hill for months have been voicing concerns about potential budgetary upheaval as a result of federal funding rollbacks. Partway through the Senate's deliberations, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a package that would stanch hundreds of millions of dollars per year from flowing to various state programs. Yet the Senate, like the House did last month, opted to proceed on a path that mostly mirrored the typical approach. The final Senate budget increases state spending more than 6% over the version Gov. Maura Healey signed last summer, more than twice the rate of growth in the prior year. It's built on revenue — and federal reimbursement — forecasts crafted in January, before congressional Republicans made significant progress on their attempted spending cuts. Senate budget chief Michael Rodrigues said at the outset of debate that lawmakers here would not 'freeze in place' waiting to see what happened in Washington, D.C. Soon after the U.S. House muscled through its sweeping package of tax cuts and spending reduction, Rodrigues said he had not yet 'had a chance to analyze it.' After the final vote Thursday evening, Senate President Karen Spilka told the News Service she felt it made sense not to change the chamber's spending plan at this point because 'there's so much uncertainty.' 'It's impossible to build a budget on data and information that we have no idea what it is or what it means, because it's not stable — it changes by the hour, forget about day, week, month or more,' she said. 'We have to build a budget. What do we do, what do we cut without knowing what it is?' The Senate added $81.1 million to the budget through amendments, mostly in the form of local earmarks, according to a Spilka aide. That pushed the final bottom line to about $61.4 billion, a bit lower than the House's nearly $61.5 billion plan. Rodrigues said most of the growth in spending is on non-discretionary areas. Nearly two-thirds of the increase is attributable to higher caseloads at MassHealth, he said. 'There's really little discretion we have there, unless we want to take people off the rolls of MassHealth,' he told the News Service. 'We looked at, literally lifted every rock and looked under every mattress to try to find any sort of savings we could.' Sen. Patricia Jehlen said Thursday that she views the Senate-approved spending plan as 'an austerity budget.' 'It does not meet the needs of our commonwealth; it is the best we can do with the resources we have,' she said. Fiscal year 2026 begins July 1, but Massachusetts is unlikely to have a budget in place by then. House and Senate Democrats for years have felt comfortable stretching their private negotiations into the next fiscal year and keeping state government funded with holdover budgets, at times producing some of the latest annual budgets in the nation. The last time a governor signed an annual state budget into law before the start of the fiscal year was in 2010. Lawmakers on the budget conference committee will have a long list of points to deliberate, including the amount of one-time revenue redirection, how much money to provide to the MBTA as well as other transportation and education initiatives funded by the surtax, the specifics of regulating broker's fees, and whether to pause admissions reforms at vocational and technical schools. The Senate tacked several substantial policy measures onto the conference committee agenda. One amendment the Senate adopted Wednesday would allow state health care regulators to cap prices for some medications, an idea that proponents say will help reduce quickly accelerating prescription drug spending but opponents warn will wreak economic harm. Another provision adopted Thursday as part of a larger amendment bundle would overhaul the process by which municipalities petition for additional liquor licenses and give cities and towns greater control over the number of licenses available. The Senate also added language calling on the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education by June 30, 2026 to recommend improvements to the foundation budget formula, which dictates aid that municipalities receive for K-12 education and how many of their own dollars communities need to contribute. Despite the uncertainty fueled by Washington, D.C., Spilka and Rodrigues said they do not expect the imminent conference committee negotiations to play out much differently than usual. Asked if she'd be comfortable with the panel slashing spending during its talks if Congress finalizes cuts, Spilka replied, 'We'll have to see how it goes.' 'Both branches have produced solid, responsible budgets, so I think from there they can go forward and we'll see,' she said. 'We'll deal with the facts presented to us, not with rumor or assumption,' Rodrigues added. 'It has to be the facts. The budget that we engrossed tonight is based upon the facts as we know it today.' Senators pushed most of the amendments filed by Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr to the final day of deliberations. Tarr, as is often the case, deployed a series of props to argue in favor of some of his proposals. This year's theatrics included an aide wearing a 'Backpack of Budget Burden,' who attempted to climb a ladder on the Senate floor adorned with cardboard printouts declaring the rungs representative of health care costs and taxes. After about an hour of debate, the Senate voted 34-5 to reject a Tarr measure that would have allowed cities and towns to petition the state for relief from the mandatory zoning reforms under the MBTA Communities Act if they could demonstrate an inability to fulfill drinking water, wastewater, transportation or environmental requirements as a result of compliance. 'We are not saying we believe there shouldn't be more housing in the commonwealth. We understand that we're at least 200,000 units short. We understand that we have to take bold and decisive action. We understand that our future hinges on being able to build that housing,' Tarr said. 'But the question is, how do we best do that, how do we do it with protecting due process, how do we do it so that we're not going out on a fool's errand and creating a zoning district where housing cannot be supported with the resources it needs? Democrats argued that an appeal process would allow resisting communities to avoid zoning reforms intended to spur much-needed housing production. [Colin A. Young contributed reporting.] Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
