Section 47C. Subject to appropriation, the state secretary shall maintain a central registry of voters which shall contain, if provided by the registrars, the names, addresses and effective dates of registration of all registered voters in the commonwealth and which shall contain the name, date of birth, occupation, veteran status, nationality, if not a citizen of the United States, for street list purposes only, and residence on January first in the preceding year and in the current year, of every person three years of age or older in the commonwealth, and shall adopt regulations governing the operation of said central registry. The names and addresses contained in said central registry shall not be a matter of public record; provided however, that they shall be available to state party committees, statewide candidate committees, state ballot question committees, the jury commissioner, adjutant general and any other individual, agency or entity that the state secretary shall designate by regulation consistent with the purposes of this section, at a fair and reasonable cost not to exceed the cost of printing or preparing computer readable documents.

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Terms Used In Massachusetts General Laws ch. 51 sec. 47C

  • Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization

The state secretary shall enter into an agreement with the Electronic Registration Information Center, Inc. on behalf of the commonwealth that shall specify the terms and conditions of the commonwealth’s membership in the Center. The agreement shall include terms providing for the periodic sharing of data between the central registry, the registry of motor vehicles and any other automatic voter registration agency as designated by the secretary, and the Center, including, but not limited to, voter names and addresses.

To the extent feasible, the state secretary shall make the statewide list of registered voters contained in the central registry of voters established in this section available to the local election officers at each polling location.