WESTERN MASS. — Last October the VOTES Act was passed by the Massachusetts state Legislature, making permanent the concessions allowed for mail-in voting during the COVID-19 state of emergency.

This year will mark the first time Massachusetts will have what’s referred to as “no-excuse” absentee voting in the absence of significant coronavirus pandemic-related restrictions. The VOTES Act also makes changes related to automatic voter registration and making it easier for people who are incarcerated on misdemeanor charges or awaiting trial to vote, but these do not take effect until January 2023.

It also makes more work for local town clerks, however. Reminder Publishing spoke with clerks Vince Gioscia in Agawam and Otto Frizzell in West Springfield on Aug. 30, the day after the cutoff to request a mail-in primary ballot, about how their offices are dealing with these new changes.

Both towns expect they will need to pay overtime to election workers in order to process the additional votes, but both Frizzell and Gioscia said they felt confident in their respective offices’ ability to handle the additional load.

“The Postal Service has been really good about getting us our mail earlier in the day,” said Gioscia, “so it helps us out because we can process everything during the day and get 99 percent of it done. We do have some overtime because it’s just sort of the nature of the beast,” said Gioscia, who added that he “saw this coming, so I did account for it all in my budget.”

“There may be state reimbursement,” Gioscia added. The state Legislature has allocated $6 million in funding for “implementing early voting,” but it is unclear if those funds will be sufficient, and how they will be distributed to local municipalities. The budget line item notably allocates $0 for “wages and salaries,” with approximately $4.8 million to be spent on “operating expenses,” and the remainder going towards “grants and subsidies.”

Regardless of who will end up footing the bill, that it is ultimately the town clerk’s responsibility to manage the correct and accurate processing of all ballots means they have their work cut out for them. But Frizzell isn’t worried.

“From my perspective, it kind of just gelled what we were already getting used to since COVID[-19] started. Now it’s kind of set down and permanent law, but it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve done early voting,” said Frizzell.

Frizzell said that votes received by mail are processed at what the state calls a central tabulation facility. “But it’s here in my office. It’s not like a third location,” he said.

“They’re checked in just like they were it would be on election day. And then we process them into the same style machines that are at the polls,” said Frizzell.

The two towns have nearly identical populations of slightly under 29,000 people as of the 2020 census, and each has about 20,000 registered voters. In Agawam, 2,500 people requested a mail-in ballot for the Sept. 6 primary election. In West Springfield 2,403 did.

How many voters will opt to cast their ballot by mail this November remains unknown.

“The only comparison I have is 2020. But that was really extenuating circumstances,” said Gioscia. “Call me in for four or five years [and] I’ll be able to better give you an educated guess.”

Although earlier versions of the VOTES Act did include changes that would allow for same-day registration, the final version of the law did not include this provision. Instead, the deadline to register to vote has been shortened from 20 days prior to the election to 10 days. The deadline to register to vote in the 2022 state general election is Oct. 29. The deadline to request a mail-in ballot is Nov. 1.

For more information on how to vote or register to vote, visit sec.state.ma.us.