On July 6, Secretary of State Bill Gavin announced that Gov. Charlie Baker had signed an H.4820 into law. The new legislation extends the early voting period and grants all Massachusetts residents the option to vote by mail in the 2020 state primary and general elections.

Create the Vote Steering Committee partner MassVOTE has put together this helpful FAQ to help you understand the bill and how it affects voting in the age of COVID-19.

More information about recent election law changes can be found here.

Lawsuit Update:
On July 13, a collective of minority voters filed a petition for Massachusetts’ highest court to order the state to send vote-by-mail applications to voters this week. The petition was started by MassVOTE, Common Cause Massachusetts, and a group of Black, Latino and Asian-American voters.

The petition stated that the law requires Secretary of State William Galvin to send applications by July 15, but Galvin claimed he wouldn’t meet the deadline because lawmakers had not provided funding to send the applications. According to Oren Sellstrom of Lawyers for Civil Rights, the “delay comes at the expense of those in our communities who are most vulnerable.”

On July 14, Galvin’s office confirmed that the administration had provided advance funding for the vote-by-mail applications. Galvin moved forward with sending out the applications once those funds were secured.