The recently mailed 2025 application for mail-in ballots for town elections contains a significant error: The instructions say no postage is necessary, but that is not correct. In fact, applicants must add postage to the return portion of the application.
Sent to all 25,204 registered Needham voters, the erroneous cards create a bumpy start to early voting for the Jan. 14 special election when the town’s MBTA Community Law compliance zoning plan will be up for repeal.
“We were going back and forth on whether we should do postage prepaid or have a stamp,” said Town Clerk Louise Miller. “The cost [of prepaid postage] was just too high, where we only expect maybe 40% of the people to request it.”
“The ‘no postage necessary’ didn’t get deleted from the text. But the (front of the) postcard is correct. People need to put a stamp on there.”
“I take full responsibility for missing the failure to delete that sentence,” she wrote in a text to the Observer. “It does seem pretty obvious that it needs a stamp.”
Miller said the town will be taking to social media and other avenues to notify voters of the error. She is also working with local post office officials to sort out what happens with postcards that are mailed but not stamped. She said the manager for Needham was not available Tuesday, but she was told the USPS will likely still deliver the postcards and “postage will be paid by the addressee — the town.”
The town contracts with LHS Associates of Salem, New Hampshire, for election printing and mailing services.
The Vote by Mail application covers both the upcoming Jan. 14 repeal special election and the annual Town Election in April. “It cost us $9,700 to send all the postcards out,” Miller said. “It was going to cost us another $7,500 to have the postage prepaid.”
Thomas Burge, manager of the LHS Municipal Division, said the project had a tight schedule. “I know that the vote was scheduled pretty quick. We had to turn it around in like five days.”
Burge said he felt he had the town’s final approval on the language and that requiring a stamp is standard. Municipalities, he said, generally do not use the Business Reply Mail stamp common in commercial marketing.
Miller said voters have begun returning the postcards in person to the town clerk’s office. “It is unfortunate, but I can’t go back and undo it at this point,” said Miller, who managed to find a bright spot.
“A lot of people weren’t aware that there was going to be a special election Jan. 14,” she said. “People are now calling to say, ‘Can you let me know what the special election is about?’
“So it’s really serving, I think, a good purpose.”
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