WORCESTER, Mass. - The City of Worcester's Board of Election Commissioners voted in favor of mail-in voting and early voting scheduled for the September preliminary election.

City Clerk Niko Vangjeli says this means people can opt in to vote by mail, vote early in person at their assigned locations, as well as in person on Election Day. The Sept. 14 preliminary election includes District 1 and District 5 council races.

Vangjeli says 2020 is probably the largest election they've ever run as a City in terms of mail-in voting. He says they laid the groundwork last year and at this point their tweaking a few things to make sure the process is perfect.

"With the boards direction and the boards support we finalized the schedule to get ready to make sure that the early voting locations are operational come the second week in September. As well as we are processing mail in ballot applications at this point, sending out ballots we had to send a few hundred ballots out yesterday to the voters in District 1 and District 5," Vangjeli said. "Certainly a lot of the ground work. It used to be that Election Day was only one day, now we see the trend is 30 days out because of the mail-in process and of course early voting in-person."

In order to do a mail in ballot, you have to submit an application, which can be found on the city's website. Vangjeli says the commission will meet again in Sept. to vote on the Nov. early in-person voting schedule.