The Winthrop Town Council retroactively voted to authorize early-voting operations in town, while sparking questions about the impartiality of the town government in administering the November election.

The council, in an emergency meeting Thursday evening – held just as the town finished a week of early-voting sessions for the November 4 election – voted 8-0 to formally validate those just-completed early-voting sessions.

The council meeting was preceded moments earlier by a gathering of the town’s Board of Registrars of Voters, which voted 2-0 – with its chair, Paul Reardon, abstaining – to recommend the council take that action.

Early-voting has become a common part of US elections, allowing voters with busy schedules the opportunity to cast their ballot ahead of the designated election day. It is automatically allowed in Massachusetts on the state and federal level. But the Winthrop town clerk scheduled it this year without Town Council approval, creating the last-minute need for the authorization vote.

Both the Town Council and the registrars took only minutes to convene, act on the question and adjourn, with neither body publicly debating the matter.

Debate proscribed

One council member, Joseph Aiello, did ask about offering an amendment to the authorization vote. Another, Max Tassinari, suggested that the council implement a strategy to prevent the authorization problem from recurring in the future.

But the town attorney, James Cipoletta, short-circuited the possibility of considering such questions in the immediate moment by telling the council members that they could correct their early-voting mistake only by accepting the exact resolution approved by the registrars.

The Town Council president, Jim Letterie, did, however, quickly endorse Mr Tassinari’s call for a future discussion about preventative actions. “I think that’s a good idea,” Mr Letterie told Mr Tassinari.

Shortly ahead of the meeting, Mr Aiello wrote to town officials citing concerns over the early-voting plan, putting particular attention on a four-hour early-voting session held earlier in the day at the Senior Center. The town’s week-long early-voting opportunities were largely held at the Town Hall, and the half-day Senior Center option was an additional location that the town clerk described in a notice as “just for Senior Center members.”

That raised questions among some candidates of whether they all had been given an equal opportunity to prepare their supporters for that location. “I fear that some candidates who were aware of your plans may have had an advantage in mobilizing voters to this option,” Mr Aiello said in his letter to the town clerk.

Persistent suspicions

The Senior Center also charges $20 a year for membership, which experts both inside Winthrop and beyond described as a possibly unconstitutional restriction on voting access. The town clerk later said that all voters would be welcome at the Senior Center location.

Mr Aiello also described his concern over encountering a voting supervisor with a clear publicly known role backing the re-election of the Town Council president. “At least the potential perception for possibilities should have been avoided,” Mr Aiello said of the situation.

The Winthrop Board of Registrars of Voters, meanwhile, already had been facing suspicion over its own ability to impartially oversee electoral matters. The town’s three appointed registrars recently voted in favor of including a recall of Mr Tassinari on the November ballot, as proposed by some residents over his support for town compliance with the state housing law known as 3A – despite the board being told by state and town officials that it held no authority over the matter, and without the three appointed board members publicly acknowledging that they also had supported the Tassinari recall effort.

The chair of the registrars, Mr Reardon, also is standing as a candidate for Town Council in the November 4 election. Mr Letterie, an opponent of 3A compliance, has not acted upon requests from some council members that he allow a hearing to assess the behavior of Mr Reardon and his two fellow appointed registrars.

Mr Reardon offered no reason for abstaining from the registrars’ decision to retroactively authorize the town’s early-voting sessions. Before the Town Council vote, Mr Letterie acknowledged that half of the eight current council members are also current candidates. But he cited a “rule of necessity” in allowing himself and the council’s other three current candidates to join the unanimous approval vote.