Meetings Ahead
Most meetings in Eastham are in person, typically with an online-attendance option. Click on the meeting you are interested in on the calendar at eastham-ma.gov for details. All meetings are at Town Hall unless otherwise indicated.
Thursday, Dec. 19
- Council on Aging Board of Directors, 9 a.m.
- Board of Health, 3 p.m.
- Recycling Committee, 3 p.m., Public Library
- Finance Committee, 4 p.m.
Conversation Starter
Voting Changes
The town will not be mailing out early-ballot request forms for the town election next May 20, thanks to a unanimous vote by the select board on Dec. 16. The change is a cost-saving measure, said Town Clerk Linda Sassi, and has no effect on the voting options offered for state and general elections.
“Turnout for the last town election was pretty dismal,” Sassi said. Of 4,816 registered voters, only 1,142 cast ballots — about 24 percent of those eligible.
Of those 1,142 ballots, however, only 333 were cast in person on the day of the election; the other 809 ballots were submitted early.
Requests for mail-in ballots for that election totaled 1,254, and 837 of those people actually returned their ballots. Twenty-eight of those returned ballots were received late or marked as non-deliverable by the post office and were not counted.
Sassi said that low turnout was likely due to voters being uninterested in that particular election. “Some people wrote on the back of their ballot, ‘Why did you send me this? These races are uncontested,’ ” she said. “We also got at least half a dozen calling us crooked, saying that mail-in ballots are a ‘commie plot.’ ”
Sassi said it costs 97 cents for her to mail a prepaid postcard, which means that sending ballot request forms to all of Eastham’s voters cost $4,671.52 in 2024.
Sending out the ballots themselves cost an additional $1,216.38, for a total cost of $5,887.90. Sassi and the select board agreed that money would be more usefully spent elsewhere.
But residents who can’t make it to the polls on May 20 won’t be out of luck: absentee voting is still an option for the town election. Residents must request a mail-in absentee ballot.
Early in-person voting will also be offered in the town clerk’s office. —Parker Mumford
