Voter Turnout Expected to be Light

East Boston residents will head to the polls on Tuesday, November 3 in what city officials are saying will be a quiet election.

With no Mayoral race this year, only five candidates vying for one of the four At-Large seats and Eastie’s incumbent City Councilor running unopposed voter turnout here is expected to be light come next Tuesday.

Aside from the At-Large race where candidate Annissa Essaibi-George will try to unseat one of the four incumbents there is only two Boston City Councilors with challengers and those are in Districts 3, 4, 5 and 7. Eastie’s elected City Councilor Sal LaMattina is running unopposed Tuesday.

Only 59 out of the city’s 255 precincts voted during the September 8 Primary Election and only 5553 votes cast in the District 3, 4, 5 and 7 races.

There was no primary for the At-Large race because there were less than nine candidates. Usually nine or more At-Large candidates would trigger a primary and the top eight vote getters would advance to the General Election. This year there are only five candidates, Essaibi-George and At-Large Councilors Stephen Murphy, Michael Flaherty, Michelle Wu and Ayanna Pressley and all automatically advanced to the General Election.

With only 7 percent of the total registered voters voting on September 8 it is hard to gage how much voter turnout would increase with the At-Large General Election added. While number is sure to rise with the addition of the citywide race some city election officials think it will not be by much.

The final numbers are not yet in on the total voters registered in Boston but that number is expected to be around 380,000. Of that number only 13 to 20 percent are expected to vote.

City election officials said it has been quite this election season with very few calls to the department for information.

The voting districts in Eastie is Ward 1, Precincts 1 through 14.

Voting locations in Eastie are the Sam Adams School, 165 Webster St., Donald McKay School, 122 Cottage Street, Heritage Apartments, 209 Sumner St., Paris Street Community Center, 112 Paris St., East Boston High School, 86 White St., Cheverus Apartments, 10 Moore St., Orient Heights Yacht Club, 61 Bayswater St., Curtis Guild School, 5 Ashley St., and the Orient Heights Housing Community Building, 38 Vallar Rd.

Polls will be open on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

All precincts will have English/Spanish ballots, and English/Chinese and English/Vietnamese ballots will be available in precincts where the population requires them, according to city officials. Interpreters will be available to assist voters in Chinese (both Mandarin and Cantonese dialects), Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean, and Russian as well as other languages.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *