Board of Aldermen 2-12-2020 Page 31
But this is the million that went to the School Department and they called me as early as today. They need
the money.
MOTION CARRIED
Resolution R-20-011 declared duly adopted.
President Wilshire
| did talk to Deb Chisolm and we took that off because the minutes just came out on Monday, | didn’t know it
was going to be on the Agenda as anticipated from Human Affairs on Monday. So we will take up at our
next meeting, she was OK with that.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS — ORDINANCES
O-20-002
Endorsers: Alderman-at-Large Ben Clemons
Alderman-at-Large Michael B. O’Brien, Sr.
Alderman Patricia Klee
Alderman June M. Caron
Alderman Thomas Lopez
Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright
ESTABLISHING ELECTION POLL HOURS
Given its second reading;
MOTION BY ALDERMAN CLEMONS FOR FINAL PASSAGE OF O-20-002
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Jette
I'd like to just ask why, under current law, you know we set the date and the times for polling places every
time there is an election. The law requires that we do that 30 days in advance. | was just wondering why
you feel it is important to adopt this by Ordinance instead of doing it be Resolution every time an election
comes up?
Alderman Clemons
Sure so there’s a couple of reasons. One is historically Nashua’s elections have been from 6:00 AM to
8:00 PM and for good reason. A lot of our people who live in the City work in Massachusetts, myself one of
them. | used to commute to Cambridge so | would have to leave here at 6:00 AM and if | was lucky | would
get back by like 6:45 or 7:00. So if it was an election day and | had to rush, I’m hoping there’s no traffic or
I’m hoping that you know or that | can get out of work early that day. So what this does is it sets the polling
hours for what historically we have had here in Nashua.
The second reason for doing that is because and I’m sure our Clerk would agree, NH does not make it
easy to vote absentee. It is easy to vote absentee if you are, for example, like my parents go to Florida for
the winter every year. They were able to just get an absentee ballot before they left for Florida | think they
probably handed it right to the Clerk right before they left or they mailed it in. So if you have an expected
thing where you are not going to be, then an absentee ballot is fairly easy to get. But if something
unexpected comes up, you know for somebody to have that option, the State does not make it easy. And
the State also puts a penalty on you if for some reason you take an absentee ballot and you vote absentee
and then all of a sudden you decide that, or let’s say you get back into town earlier or whatever and you
want to go vote or if even somebody just sees you in town, they can challenge your ballot.
