With one day to go until the midterm election, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin predicted that Bay State voters would turn out in numbers not seen in 20 years.
Citing factors such as “rather high” requests for absentee ballots and competitive races for several different offices, Galvin forecasted that more than 2.4 million registered voters would go to the polls, the most since 1990 when Republican William Weld defeated Democrat and former Boston University president John Silber in the governor’s race.
The standard turnout for a gubenatorial election is about 2.2 million, Galvin said at a State House press conference.
“Tomorrow we expect a very exciting election in Massachusetts,” he said.
Galvin said his office has received about 132,000 absentee ballot requests before Monday’s noon deadline.
January’s special election for Senate drew 107,000 requests and the 2008 presidential election, when a record 3.1 million Bay Staters casted their voters, included 181,000 absentee requests, according to Galvin.
A plurality of the absentee ballots have been requested by voters registered as independents, Galvin said.
About 53,000 independents have made requests, compared to 51,000 Democrats and 24,000 Republicans. However, Galvin said that independents are also the least likely group to participate in a non-presidential election.
Galvin also said the close, “nationalized” congressional races in the state will likely boost turnout from previous years.
“You usually don’t have contested congressional races, or if we do, we have one,” he said.
The secretary did not seem to think that the college-aged population would have a significant impact on turnout.
“Generally speaking, college students vote most highly in the presidential elections, they don’t take that level of interest in the local elections,” he said. “We certainly didn’t see a big uptick in voter registration amongst them.”
Responding to concerns about fraudulent voting and plans by political groups to place observers at polling places to questions individuals they suspect of being ineligibile, Galvin said his office would try to balance the right of observers to make sure voters are who they say who they are with the rights of poll-goers.
“We have no evidence of any fraud,” Galvin said, adding that his office will be deploying staff to deal with any voting issues.
“We’re not going to tolerate any effort to discourage or intimidate voters.”
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