LIVERMORE — Towns with 500 or more year-round residents will have to open polls an hour or more earlier on Tuesday, Nov. 8, for the statewide election since a change in state law went into effect Wednesday.

The law also prohibits voters from getting absentee ballots on Election Day, unless there are special circumstances.

Registered voters will need to get absentee ballots three business days before the election. The absentee ballots can still be returned on the day of election.

The 125th Legislature approved the changes in the first session, Caitlin E. Chamberlain, deputy secretary of communications for the Office of Secretary of State, said Friday.

Municipalities with populations of 500 or more are now required to open polls between 6 and 8 a.m. Prior to the change, towns with less than 4,000 residents had an option of opening polls between 6 and 10 a.m.

Towns with fewer than 500 residents can continue to open between 6 and 10 a.m.

All polls for statewide elections are required to stay open until 8 p.m. on Election Day, according to the law.

The change only applies to poll opening times for statewide elections that include referendums and gubernatorial races, Chamberlain said.

The change was made to make the hours more uniform across the state and to accommodate more voters, such as those who may have long commutes or late hours, Chamberlain said.

“We have to open two hours earlier,” Livermore Town Clerk Renda Libby said. The polls in that town were previously open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and will now need to be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Two hours doesn’t sound like a lot, Libby said, but it is hard enough for ballot clerks to sit through 10 hours of voting and now it will be 12 hours. That doesn’t factor in counting the votes, Libby said.

“Some people are not going to want to sit there for 12 hours,” she said. Plus, the town did not budget for the additional two hours pay this year, she said.

Libby and the town’s Register of Voters Jackie Dion plan to call a meeting with ballot clerks to see if they want to do the 12 hours or they should implement two shifts.

Peru Town Clerk Vera Parent said polls in that town will have to open one hour earlier. Previously for statewide elections they were open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., she said.

“I think on the voters side, a lot of them will be happy. I usually have a line waiting,” Parent said of the new time.

Leeds Deputy Clerk Michelle Hale said she believed the towns polling times will not change. They ordinary open at 8 a.m.

“It makes it easier for people to get in to vote,” Hale said.

However, clerks are unsure what the reaction will be about the cut-off time on absentee ballots changing from day of the election to three business days prior to it.

The special circumstances for getting an absentee ballot after the cut-off time include: unexpected absences from the municipality; physical disabilities, or incapacities or illnesses that make voters unable to leave homes or a treatment facilities; or inabilities to travel to the polls because voters are residents of a coastal island ward or precinct, Chamberlain said.

In Rangeley, it will be business as usual as far as polling times, Town Clerk Ethna Thompson said.

“We will still be open from 8 to 8,” she said.

She is preparing a notice to put in The Rangeley Highlander to advise people of the change in getting absentee ballots and having to get them earlier, Thompson said.

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