diff --git a/scripts/ga/ga_common.py b/scripts/ga/ga_common.py
index 4bc7835..f525260 100644
--- a/scripts/ga/ga_common.py
+++ b/scripts/ga/ga_common.py
@@ -17,7 +17,10 @@
 from pathlib import Path
 from urllib.parse import quote, urlsplit
 
-import tomllib
+try:  # tomllib is stdlib from 3.11; `tomli` is a dev dependency below that (see pyproject.toml).
+    import tomllib
+except ModuleNotFoundError:
+    import tomli as tomllib
 
 REPO_ROOT = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent.parent
 USER_AGENT = "wave-ga-evidence-sdk-python/1.0"
diff --git a/scripts/release/check_drift.py b/scripts/release/check_drift.py
index 75874d4..b67f21a 100644
--- a/scripts/release/check_drift.py
+++ b/scripts/release/check_drift.py
@@ -26,8 +26,9 @@
   2  a source was unreadable (network error, bad JSON, git/gh failure) --
      an unreadable registry is NEVER treated as "in sync"
 
-Stdlib + `git`/`gh` CLI only. No third-party imports so this runs identically
-in CI and on a laptop with nothing but Python 3.11+ and the GitHub CLI.
+Stdlib + `git`/`gh` CLI only (plus `tomli` as a dev dependency below Python 3.11, where `tomllib`
+isn't stdlib yet) so this runs identically in CI and on a laptop with the GitHub CLI, across the
+full `requires-python = ">=3.9"` matrix this package supports.
 """
 from __future__ import annotations
 
@@ -40,7 +41,10 @@
 import urllib.request
 from pathlib import Path
 
-import tomllib
+try:  # tomllib is stdlib from 3.11; `tomli` is a dev dependency below that (see pyproject.toml).
+    import tomllib
+except ModuleNotFoundError:
+    import tomli as tomllib
 
 PYPI_PROJECT = "wave-sdk"
 GITHUB_REPO = "wave-av/sdk-python"