Southbridge Election Officials Need to Pay Attention

It seems tour friend the Town Clerk in Southbridge may have had another "oops" moment when she sent out the absentee ballots to our military personnel and others and wrote "Do Not Vote For More Than Two" for School Committee, when she really meant three. This brings up some interesting questions, especially if the school committee race is close.

One question which was asked is would this invalidate the school committee race? Would it be considered illegal? Now I am neither a lawyer nor do I play one on TV, I am just a guy who has nothing better to do than think about these things, but I would say unless she somehow deliberately tried to sway voters from voting for a certain candidate or candidates, no.

The more interesting question is what happens if it is a close race, of course I know I am just throwing this out there because there are never, ever close races in Southbridge, but it there were, how could you do an accurate recount? Even if it isn't a close race, you don't know who someone would have voted for as their third choice, sooooooo...

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Does Southbridge have to do a "Do-over" again? I would say yes, maybe. I went to the town's website to look at the ballot to see how many people are running. The ballot which is posted online shows only two candidates for School Committee which would make the point moot. Just one problem, the posted ballot is from 2009. Now I am not saying there is any intentional misleading going on here, but after November, does Southbridge need any more questions of possible voter fraud? I think not.


In these days of tight budgets and threats of lay offs etc. can Southbridge really afford the costs of lawyers and holding special elections just because someone doesn't pay attention? I'm not sure what is going on in Southbridge, but there certainly seems like there needs to be some kind of oversight, more than there is. It's time for professionalism in Southbridge.