November 2, 2021
When polls close Tuesday at 8 p.m., watchers of Boston politics will have several different ways to get results for the mayoral and City Council races. Three questions are also on the ballot: An amendment to the city charter expanding the budgetary powers of the City Council, whether an Eversource substation should be built in East Boston, and whether the School Committee should be changed back to an elected, rather than an appointed, body.
The city’s election department plans to receive and upload unofficial results to the city’s website as they come in from each of Boston’s 255 precincts. Those initial results on the website won’t include early voting and mail ballots from specific precincts being counted during the day at City Hall. The initial results also won’t include mail or absentee ballots that arrive on time but are too late to be sent to polling locations for counting.
“Mail or absentee ballots that arrive on time at the Election Department, but too late to be sent to polling locations will be counted at City Hall on Election Night, starting after the voting lists from each precinct are returned,” city officials said in a release. “Election officials can count a ballot only after it has been confirmed that the voter did not already vote in person at their polling location.”
The counting of some ballots may not start until after 10 p.m.
A “central tabulation facility” will be set up inside City Hall’s Iannella Chamber and will be open to public observers. Precincts with a large number of early voting ballots will be counted in that room.
The Dorchester Reporter, as it did in the September 14 preliminary, plans to pull in vote totals from several key precincts in the neighborhood. Follow along on Twitter here.
Other operations to pull in vote totals are also underway.
Roslindale resident Matt McCloskey is helping to coordinate a volunteer effort that involves various groups and campaigns pooling resources. They include ward committees and at-large campaigns, among others. The online spreadsheet is available here.
Of course, the mayoral campaigns will have their own unofficial results, as they did in the preliminary, with their people hitting the various polling locations.
The two candidates’ Election Day schedules will take them across the city, starting in their home precincts and ending with victory parties in the South End and Back Bay.
City Councillor At-Large Annissa Essaibi George plans to vote with her family at the Bellflower Apartments in Dorchester, before heading to polling locations in South Boston, the North End, Charlestown, East Boston and Roxbury. She also plans stops at Florian Hall, a double-precinct location in Dorchester, and Morning Star Baptist Church in Mattapan.
Her campaign’s Election Night party will take place at the Copley Fairmont Plaza in Back Bay.
City Councillor At-Large Michelle Wu is slated to vote at the Bates Elementary School in Roslindale before kicking off a canvassing effort in Jamaica Plain and then heading to Santarpio’s for lunch. Canvassing kickoffs in Allston-Brighton and Dorchester are on the afternoon schedule, before Roxbury and South End polling location visits with former City Councillor Tito Jackson and state Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.
Wu’s Election Night party is set for the Cyclorama in the city’s South End.