Voting early? Town adds in-person option starting next week

Acton just added another way to cast an early ballot. 

The Town Clerk’s office will run in-person early voting at the Town House, 22 Monument Square. 

Early voting is available:

• Thursday, March 26, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Friday, March 27, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. 

Unlike in-person absentee balloting at the clerk’s office counter, official early voting will happen in the Town House’s second-floor hearing room. It involves checking in with a poll worker and filling out a ballot in a voting booth. 

“It feels more like a polling location,” Town Clerk Kaari Mai Tari told the Select Board. 

Massachusetts law requires early voting only for state and federal elections. Municipalities can choose to make it available for local elections.

In recent years, Acton has stuck with mail-in voting and the absentee option. Both remain available in this election. 

Among key election dates:

• The clerk’s office will offer special Saturday hours for in-person absentee voting from 10 a.m. to noon on March 28.
• In-person absentee voting is available until noon on March 30. 
• Election day is March 31.

How it works

To qualify for absentee voting under state rules, the voter must be out of town on election day or unable to vote at their polling place due to a disability or religious belief.

Anyone can request a mail-in ballot, but they must do so by March 24 at 5 p.m.

The clerk’s office was especially busy with absentee requests on the Fridays before recent town elections, Tari told The Acton Bridge. Staff already had their hands full prepping for election day itself.

The town will tap its corps of poll workers to help manage early voting in the final two working days before this year’s election. 

The plan involves paying poll workers who would have otherwise worked only on election day. Town Manager Kerry Lafleur told The Bridge that officials factored this possibility into their 2026 fiscal year budget.

On Monday night, the Select Board unanimously approved adding early voting. 

In the running

Acton has just one contested municipal race this season as Dean Banfield and Sam Hiersteiner vie for a Select Board seat. A large crowd turned out as the League of Women Voters held the first in a string of scheduled candidate forums this week, attendees told The Bridge.

Mail-in and absentee voting started last week. Tari said ballots were coming in at a “moderate” pace as of Monday night. So far, she said, voter interest in 2026 seems on par with 2025 despite the lack of a competitive School Committee race like last year’s contest.