Our office has been extremely interested in these midterm elections since we are trying to advance efficiencies in the real estate mortgage closing process. Particularly, we were paying close attention to the Secretary of State race between William Galvin and Bill Campbell and the Governor's race between Deval Patrick and Charlie Baker. Unfortunately, the results were not what we hoped.
First, under William Galvin's direction, the State run registry system needs to be improved. First, you can only electronically record documents in a few counties. Recently, there has been this hype that Worcester was piloting a single portal recording system. So, we have been waiting and waiting for this thing to go live. Nothing so far. However, i find it interesting that the state (so I have been told) is looking at electronic recordings as another revenue stream for them to be split with EDS, a company owned by HP. Here is an idea. Let's move the Secretary of State's office into the 21st century.
Next, concerning the race between Patrick and Baker, we were hopeful that Baker would win. Approximately ten months ago, our office meet with Governor's counsel to ask them to amend Executive Order 455, Conduct and Standards for Notary Publics. After the meeting, I was told that they would recommend that the Governor amend the order. After waiting approximately four months, countless unreturned phone calls, I finally received a letter stating that electronic notaries are illegal in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am guessing that Patrick's office called William Galvin to ask his opinion on this. In my experience in dealing with government, they never want to change anything. They usually site some illogical reasoning as their objection to change. Anyway, we were hopeful that some new faces would arrive but it was not meant to be.
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