Washington Monthly – In 1638, the white, landowning Puritan men of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gathered on Election Day to vote for a new colonial governor. For the next 380 years, the franchise expanded, but the citizens of what became the Commonwealth of Massachusetts continued to vote in the same manner: by showing up on Election Day to cast ballots at polling places. While other states, particularly in the West, made voting convenient by mailing citizens their ballots, the Bay State stuck to its old ways.