Last summer, delegates from every Democratic town and ward committee voted to approve a new platform for the Massachusetts Democratic Party. The platform assumed a bold stance on several progressive issues, standing firmly in support of ranked-choice voting, the elimination of the filibuster, and access to healthcare. It also, notably, endorsed in no uncertain terms “same-day voter registration and automatic voter registration.”
But on Jan. 27, 2022, when the State House of Representatives had the chance to introduce these voting practices, it decided against it by a margin of 93 to 64. Ironically, 66 House Democrats were among those killing Election Day Registration. Through the long deliberations, House leadership had built a majority coalition of Republicans and centrist Democrats to defeat the provision many of them had supported before the vote.
In October 2021, the State Senate passed S.2554, “An Act Fostering Voter Opportunities, Trust, Equity and Security,” a comprehensive voting rights package that sought to expand equitable access to the polls and increase voter turnout. The VOTES Act passed easily by a margin of 36-3, with only the three Republican state senators voting against it.
The bill was passed to the House as H.4359, where the House Ways and Means Committee revised the text of the bill, notably removing same-day registration from the bill before it went to the floor of the House.
New House amendments sought to reintroduce same-day registration, including Amendment #11, filed by Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, D-Northampton, and Amendment #40, filed by Rep. Nika Elugardo, D-Jamaica Plain, designed as a compromise bill by focusing exclusively on Election Day registration at the expense of same-day registration in the early voting period.
However, none of these amendments would ever receive a real debate, since Assistant Majority Leader Rep. Michael Moran, D-Brighton, proposed Amendment #11.1, which replaced the text of Sabadosa’s amendment with a proposal for a commission report on the impacts and costs of implementing same-day registration. In the lengthy debate that followed, centrist Democrats defended #11.1 by arguing against same-day voter registration, winning over 93 representatives to vote in favor of the revised amendment. Elugardo’s Amendment #40 was ruled too similar to Amendment #11 and was laid aside.
Votes like these have become par for the course in the State House, where progressive reforms supported by a majority of the population and the entire Democratic delegation in the Senate are struck down by moderates in the House. And once again, House leadership is pulling the strings. It is no coincidence that Amendment #11.1 was proposed by the Assistant Majority Leader, and it is no coincidence that the first “yes” vote came from the Speaker.
While activist groups watching the deliberations began to suspect foul play as the debate dragged on, the pervasiveness of the leadership’s work did not become clear until the roll call vote on Amendment #11.1. Among those voting in favor were thirty-two Democratic representatives who had co-sponsored the original bill, which included same-day registration. Of those thirty-two, four had even co-sponsored Elugardo’s own amendment to re-introduce it, forcing the very amendment they had just endorsed to be laid aside.
The bill itself is certainly a net positive for voting rights in Massachusetts, especially thanks to Rep. Liz Miranda’s, D-Boston, amendment to expand jail-based voting and voting rights education for the incarcerated. An eventual commission report is likely to be favorable for progressives too, as Secretary of State William Galvin is publicly pro-same-day registration and expressed his opinion that the topic needs no further investigation.
But pushing the topic to “further study” is the Democratic leadership’s tactical manner of killing a proposal without signing their names to it. This tactic has been tried and true by the moderate Democratic establishment, who frequently use voice votes instead of roll call votes, and bully their representatives behind the scenes to the point that representatives fear political suicide if they vote against the party line.
This is not even the first time House leadership has forced same-day registration to a study instead of a vote. The same tactic was used to delay H.2093, filed by Rep. Liz Malia in 2017. The Democrat from Jamaica Plain, it should be noted, voted in favor of Amendment #11.1.
By voting on Amendment #11.1 instead of the amendments proposed by Sabadosa, Elugardo, or Rep. Carmine Gentile, D-Sudbury, moderate Democrats get a roll call document in which they are marked as voting “yes” to “studying same-day registration,” even though they have no intention of supporting the policy should a commission report be favorable.
This is perhaps the most insulting aspect of the vote: a study is wholly unnecessary. While many representatives claimed that same-day registration would put an outsize burden on local clerks, the Massachusetts Town Clerks Association has publicly endorsed an amendment to allow Election Day registration. Additionally, 21 states have already passed laws to allow Election Day registration, including Massachusetts’s neighbors Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Same-day registration has been proven to boost turnout rates, especially among people of color.
But the fundamental issue at the core of this controversy was made abundantly clear in one comment made by Rep. Michael Day, D-Stoneham, during the deliberations.
Day criticized the rhetoric of those speaking in defense of same-day registration, specifically how they had said a lack of same-day registration was a means of voter disenfranchisement. “One might think we’re in Georgia based on this discussion,” Day had responded on the House floor before the vote.
Massachusetts, especially its legislature, views itself as better than other states. It claims to be above the struggles faced by the rest of the nation. It therefore only makes sense that one of the most common arguments against progressive legislation, whether on voting rights, police reform, or government transparency, is not that those proposals are bad, but that Massachusetts doesn’t need them. In their eyes, the status quo has become the ideal, and so long as major bills are passed by voice vote, the voters have no way of holding them accountable.
House leadership has successfully proven its power and its will time and time again. What it has failed to do is anything meaningful with that power other than consolidate it even more. Surely a leadership that can convince 66 of its representatives to kill a proposal taken straight from their own party’s platform can use their power to meaningfully improve the lives of their constituents.
Power for power’s sake inevitably corrupts. Recent history has taught this to Massachusetts. A Democratic supermajority not backed by Democratic policies is meaningless, and it’s well past time to bring meaning back to our state politics.
Image by Arnaud Jaegers licensed under Unsplash License.
