Salerno, Roche clear the path for voters
By Ravi Prasad

   If voters see red at the polls today, they can thank Election Commissioner Nicholas Salerno. Salerno worked with the Department of Public Works and the Department of Traffic and Parking to make more parking available in congested polling areas. As a result, parking meters bagged in red cloth, barrels on the street, and saw horses on the sidewalk demarcate new 10-minute voter parking spaces.

     Salerno said “Alderman [William A.] Roche got comments from a few voters who found it so difficult to park that they ended up not voting.” During the September 27th senate race, 6767 Somerville residents voted. It is the hope of Secretary of State William F. Galvin that today’s election will see a turnout of “between 20-30%” of the voting population, or between 8000-12,000 people.
     Salerno said, “When the Aldermen spoke in terms of fixing parking in the future, I said ‘why don’t we do it now?’ It took some time to go scope out locations where the aldermen said there would be the most congestion, but I sat down and looked at all the locations and I thought we’d take the precincts that could use the most relief.”
     Salerno’s efforts have made additional parking available in 12 of the 21 precincts. More parking may be added in the future.
     Roche said, “This is a good pilot program to see if [parking] will make a difference. If it doesn’t show today, it will probably make a difference in a later election. People say, ‘when I’m going to work or coming home from work, if there’s parking, I’ll pull over and vote, and if not, I’ll keep going.’”
     Although Salerno said that it is too early to speculate on how the new parking spaces will affect voter participation, he did admit, “I just hope we’ll get a good turnout.”