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Town Clerk warns mail-ballot system has stretched staff and election budget
Summary
Millis’ newly appointed town clerk told the finance committee that universal mail ballots and new state systems have increased office workload and election worker costs; the town seeks state reimbursements that offset some expenses but staffing and training remain major pressures.
Kathy Smith, the Town Clerk for the Town of Millis, told the finance committee that changes to state election rules and new voter systems have substantially increased the office’s workload and election-related budget pressures.
"We mailed over 3,000 ballots" for the 2024 presidential election, Smith said, noting that before June 2022 the office mailed roughly "40 to 50" ballots for comparable elections. She said the Commonwealth’s adoption of Massachusetts General Law Chapter 54, Section 25B — which allows every registered voter to receive a mail ballot — transformed what had been a one-day process into a multi-week operation that requires months of staff time.
Smith said the largest election line item in the FY27 request is election worker wages, because the town must staff mandatory early-voting windows (one week in September, two weeks in November) and the volume of mail ballots requires additional training and staffing. She described new platform rollouts — including a revamped voter-registration information system (VRIS) and a new vital-records system — that required extended state-mandated training and short-term manual work to migrate records.
Committee members asked how a hypothetical federal change requiring proof-of-citizenship (the Save Act) would affect operations. "It would be a lot of work for us," Smith said, comparing the burden to provisional-ballot procedures in which staff allow people to vote and then spend days verifying eligibility before finalizing counts.
Smith said the town applies for early-voting reimbursement grants to offset costs. "We can receive anywhere up to $35,000," she said, explaining that reimbursement covers early-voting staff time, postage, and coding of early ballots. She added that those grant receipts flow into the town’s general fund.
The committee discussed election-technology options such as electronic voting clickers for town meeting. Smith said the estimated one-time cost is about $16,000 and that neighboring towns have adopted similar systems, but she said the select board has not recently acted on the policy question.
The clerk closed by describing records-management work to standardize filing for planning and zoning records and by praising a new dog-license system that automates reminders. She told the committee that while the new systems create a training burden now, they should improve efficiency once stable.
The committee did not change the budget at the meeting; members asked for follow-up details and noted the FY27 election budget will be reviewed again as part of the broader finance work leading up to town meeting.
