Election? What Election?

By Glenn C. Koenig, Webmaster at Town Wide Mall

NOTE:  This story has been revised at 9:15 AM on Tuesday morning 5 May 2026.  A link to information on write in candidates has been added in the main news section.

Maynard, MA - A local town election is scheduled for Tuesday, May 5th.  Voters can vote in person at the Fowler Middle School, 3 Tiger Drive, from 7:00 AM until 8:00 PM.
​The deadline for requests for mail-in ballots has already passed; that was April 28th.  So voting in person is the only option by now.

The elections calendar is available on the town’s web site here:
https://www.townofmaynard-ma.gov/170/Elections
There is a link to see a sample ballot, listing the offices and candidates, here:
https://www.townofmaynard-ma.gov/494/Sample-Ballots

Update:  The crew at The Maynard Voice has just published statements from Write-In candidates for some of the open slots on the ballot.  Their story is available here:
https://maynardvoice.com/maynards-annual-town-election-is-tuesday-heres-whats-on-your-ballot/

Tip for write-in voting:  I’d recommend printing out or copying down the exact spelling of the name of the candidate and their address, along with the name of the office for which they are running, then keep it in your back pocket of purse when you go to vote.
​Election laws specify that you cannot openly display any information about a candidate or ballot question to anyone else in the polling place (or within 150 feet of the polling place), but once you are in the privacy of the voting booth, it is permissible to refer to any notes you have brought with you.  Make sure to use the marker to fill in the oval to the right of the person you are writing in.  Otherwise, your vote will be ignored by the system.  Make sure to take your private notes away with you and keep them hidden until you submit your ballot and leave.

Once the election is over, preliminary results will be published on the town’s web site soon after the polls close, on Tuesday evening.  Those numbers come from the automatic counts provided by each ballot box scanner, but they only list candidates who appeared on the ballot.  Write in votes must be hand counted, so those results won’t be available until the following day.  Official results for all vote totals have to wait until a thorough review of the results is done to insure accuracy.

News Analysis

If the existence of this election escaped you, I’m not surprised.  Even though I try to keep track of these things, missed it myself, until a few days ago.
After all, no one has mailed out campaign cards asking for your vote.  There have been no press releases or other news.  The Warrant booklet for Town Meeting does not mention the election (the town’s charter only requires that election notices be posted in certain public places around town and on the web site, but not mailed out). As a result, turn out is expected to be extremely low.

So, why the lack of publicity?  A look at the sample ballot (see link above) should give you some idea.  Of the five boards and committees shown, not one of the seats is contested!  Beyond that, only one candidate is running for School Committee even though two seats are open.  And there are no candidates at all for Library Trustee, or for either of the two Housing Authority seats (one for a four year term, the other for five). When I contacted the Town Clerk, she told me that there are a few write-in campaigns going on, but I have not had time to research who is running for which seat (However, see Update, above).
Some voters may want to show their approval for the incumbent candidates by voting for them, even if they’re bound to be re-elected anyway.

Commentary

This kind of situation has become more and more common over the past few decades.
On the state and national level, we often hear the accusation that someone, or some political party is "a threat to democracy."   Most of that centers around redistricting (“Gerrymandering”) and voter suppression (limiting access to the polls).  But here in town, we have a different issue to face: Insufficient candidates to fill the positions open.
Each local election in Maynard costs close to $6,500 to run (state and national ones cost a few thousand dollars more).  So, why not just cancel elections where no candidates face opposition and save the money?  Even if we wanted to, state law and the town charter require that we hold an election for local offices each Spring. And it’s possible that some of those empty seats will be filled with write-in candidates.  Although one might ask, is it still democracy if just a handful of people write in a name that “wins’ the seat, without the rest of the voting public aware of who will be serving until the election is already over?  Interesting question.

I found a news story from a small town in New Hampshire, just published this April.  Here is the link: https://ledgertranscript.com/2026/04/13/volunteer-crisis-small-towns/
It’s clear from this story that this phenomenon is quite widespread throughout New England.  Maynard is certainly not the only town. The author of the article suggests that once one gets familiar with how the meetings work and what the issues are, serving on a board or committee may not be quite as daunting as it may first appear.  Nice idea, but I suspect that not many people have the time or energy to even give it a try.  Today’s town governments have become increasingly complex and face more and more challenging issues to resolve, given the uncertainty of the economy along with rapidly changing technology.
​A time of shrinking budgets may also deter people from volunteering these days.  When there is an increase in revenues, people are happy to jump in with ideas on how to spend the newly found money.  But when costs keep going up, while revenues are capped, we’re left with difficult decisions to make that no one is really happy about.

If there were any easy answers to all this, we’d have changed things by now.   Meanwhile, the trend seems to be continuing.  A few years ago, I wrote an essay entitled “Low Voter Turnout.”  You can read or download a copy on my Perspectives page.  Most of the factors I mentioned cannot be easily reversed. 
What we may need is some new “way outside the box” thinking.  Perhaps some functions provided by local government will have to be spun off to be handled by community groups instead.  There may be other ideas.  I’m interested in what you think.  Feel free to submit something in the comments, below.