For Needham’s Town Clerk, the Election is On

November 1, 2024
• Nov. 5 is Election Day, but in the Needham town clerk’s office, election season begins months before and won’t even end on Tuesday.

Stepping inside Town Clerk Louise Miller’s office, the first thing you notice is the paper. Piles of paperwork and bins full of paper materials surrounded her as she, somewhat ironically, typed on her computer Friday morning.

It had already been a busy morning at Town Hall. A long line formed within the first hour of early voting, during which Miller estimates close to 100 people cast their ballots. An election warden said she’d seen around 300 people stop in by about 10:15 a.m.

Though Election Day is on the horizon, Miller and her staff started mailing out ballots back in September, kicking off a months-long process that, yes, involves lots of paper.

Luckily, Miller considers herself a very organized person.

“It is an operational challenge,” Miller said. “You’ve got to figure out how to operate this and keep track of everything and keep everything going.”

The act of opening the ballots themselves is perhaps the most time-consuming part of Miller’s day, she said. Her office fielded just shy of 10,000 requests for mail-in ballots and have received more than 7,000 back so far.

Upon collecting a mail-in ballot, Miller and her staff begin an involved process of opening, stamping, dating, counting and sorting every envelope — first by precinct and then by street order — before even opening up the individual ballots. Prior to Tuesday, however, they cannot tabulate the actual votes, and Miller expects they may still need to process some mail-in ballots after 8 p.m. that day.

Early in-person voting began Oct. 19 and ended Friday, but more than 40% of registered Needham voters have already cast their ballots, either by mail or in-person — of the 25,092 registered voters, 7,130 have returned mail-in ballots and 3,170 cast their ballots as of Thursday morning. The office still has between 700 to 900 ballots to process from yesterday, Miller said.

That turnout is high compared to other municipalities in the Commonwealth, Miller said as she scanned a spreadsheet. Her office empties the ballot drop box outside Town Hall throughout the day, and when the post office delivers the mail, ballots arrive by the bin-full.

“I don’t think people understand the order of magnitude of what’s happening,” Miller said, “and we’re not a big office.”

It’s Miller’s first election as town clerk since taking office earlier this year, succeeding longtime Town Clerk Tedi Eaton, who certified the April election. Apart from an extremely tight presidential race, local races are also hotly contested. Needham voters will decide who replaces Rep. Denise Garlick and decide between Democratic state Sen. Becca Rausch and her Republican opponent Dashe Videira.

And while other communities have paused the issuance of licenses and other town clerk duties, none of that has stopped in Needham — Miller said several couples have stopped by for their marriage licenses, possibly due to that overflow.

“That’s what our job is,” said Miller, who is the burial agent. “So, it’s been interesting.”

Thousands of votes have already been cast, but Miller will wait until the official Election Day to enter the voting booth herself.

“It was maybe Sept. 20 that the first ballots went out, and from Sept. 20 to [Nov.] 5th is a good six weeks,” Miller said. “A lot can happen in six weeks.”

Staff have worked into the weekends to process all the election materials, with Miller surviving on sugar and chocolate, she said. She woke up at 3 a.m. Friday and put together a to-do list for the day before arriving at the office at 7:30. From there, it’s more organization, setting up for voting and staffing and all the rest.

“There are no breaks,” she said, “but I want people to go home and rest, because we don’t want mistakes.”

Miller underscored the importance of ensuring a secure, fair election. The town clerk’s office confirms the ballots received are logged, counted and accurately reported, Miller said, and they’ve “bent over backwards to try to make everything accessible.” Those who need additional accommodations have the help of two people, not registered with the same party, in an effort to report everything properly, Miller said.

For absentee voters, such as college students, the office will send another ballot in the event the first is lost or not returned, Miller said. Those need to be postmarked by Nov. 5 and received by Nov. 8, she added.

“We can’t manipulate the outcome,” Miller said. “The ballots are the ballots… We reconcile everything to the ballot.”

The Department of Public Works drops off voting booths, and all the ballots and “brains” of the tabulators are kept at Town Hall before police pick them up at 6 a.m. Election Day, Miller said. Wardens and other officers arrive at Needham’s five polling locations before voting begins at 7 a.m.

Miller plans to float between the polls all day and answer phone calls — “the issues are endless that come up,” she said. All eyes are on the finish line.

“I do want people to know we are working really hard here,” Miller said. “We want the election to be fair, and we’re working really hard to maintain the integrity of the election and also the accessibility to everyone.”