Table of Contents
Get our free local reporting delivered straight to your inbox. No noise, no spam — just clear, independent coverage of Marblehead. Sign up for our once-a-week newsletter.
Polls opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday in Marblehead’s six precincts, and nearly one in three of the town’s registered voters had already cast a ballot.
When the polls opened, 5,283 Marblehead voters had already voted by mail or early in person, or 30.9 percent of the town’s 17,084 registered voters, according to figures the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office released at 7 a.m. Tuesday. Statewide, 1.2 million of 5.2 million registered voters had voted, or 22.3 percent. The office said it will release no more statewide turnout figures until results are certified.
Polls close at 8 p.m., and anyone in line at 8 p.m. may still vote, according to the state’s Information for Voters booklet. The ballot asks voters to choose a U.S. senator, fill Marblehead’s open seat in Congress, elect a governor and lieutenant governor and four other statewide officers, a Governor’s Councillor, a state senator, a state representative, a district attorney and a register of probate, and answer 10 questions. Nine are binding statewide questions. The 10th, on a carbon fee, is advisory and appears only in two House districts, including Marblehead’s. The Independent’s election guide covers every contest and question.
Where to vote
Voters must vote in their own precinct. A precinct can be checked through the state’s Where Do I Vote lookup or by calling the Town Clerk’s office at 781-631-0528.
At the Sept. 1 primary, Precincts 1 and 2 voted at Abbot Hall, 188 Washington St., and Precincts 3, 4, 5 and 6 voted at the Marblehead High School Field House, 2 Humphrey St.
Registration for this election closed Oct. 24, so voters cannot register at the polls. Voters who registered by mail and are voting for the first time may be asked to show identification, such as a driver’s license or a recent utility bill with their name and address.
Mail ballots still out
The Secretary’s figures show 4,341 mail ballots sent to Marblehead voters and 3,395 returned by the time polls opened, a return rate of 78.2 percent. That leaves 946 outstanding.
A mail ballot must reach a drop box or the Town Clerk’s office in Abbot Hall by 8 p.m. Tuesday to count, and it cannot be dropped off at a polling place, according to the Secretary’s rules. A ballot postmarked by Tuesday still counts if it arrives by Friday, Nov. 6. Voters should use only a drop box in the city or town where they are registered; locations are listed at VoteInMA.com.
“If you still have your mail-in ballot, you can bring it to a drop box or your local election office until 8 p.m. on Election Day,” Secretary of the Commonwealth William Francis Galvin said last week.
A voter who has not returned a mail ballot may still vote at the polls. Clerks check the marked voter lists before counting any ballot that arrives later, and a mail ballot from someone who voted in person is rejected, the Secretary’s office said.
How the early vote stacks up
Of Marblehead’s 5,283 ballots, 3,395 came back by mail and 1,888 were cast in person during early voting, which ended at noon Friday at Abbot Hall. The total rose by 626 from Thursday afternoon’s 4,657, a gain of 13.4 percent. Statewide the count rose 18.8 percent over the same stretch.
That left Marblehead 58th among the state’s 351 cities and towns by the share of registered voters who have voted, down from 37th on Thursday, and 28th among the 163 with at least 10,000 registered voters, down from 15th. Gosnold, with 92 registered voters, led the state at 43.5 percent, and Eastham was next at 43.1 percent. Mashpee led the larger communities at 39.7 percent.
Marblehead still led its neighbors, though Nahant all but caught up. Nahant stood at 30.8 percent, or 860 of 2,796; Swampscott at 29.1 percent, or 3,734 of 12,842; Beverly at 25.7 percent, or 7,988 of 31,078; Salem at 17.4 percent, or 6,508 of 37,405; and Lynn at 11.8 percent, or 7,593 of 64,610.
The early count already equals 49.7 percent of the 10,636 ballots Marblehead cast in the 2022 governor’s race, the last state election. In the 2024 presidential race the town cast 13,760.
Massachusetts has no official election-night reporting. Clerks give unofficial tallies to the Associated Press, and many post them on town websites. Those tallies include ballots cast at the polls, ballots cast during early voting and mail ballots received by Tuesday. Because this year’s ballot runs two to four pages and poll workers must reconcile voters who return only some pages, the Secretary’s office warned that unofficial results could post later in the evening than usual.
Mail ballots that arrive by Friday, Nov. 6, cannot be counted until after 5 p.m. that day. Clerks must certify local results by Nov. 18, and the Governor and Governor’s Council are expected to certify the statewide results Dec. 2, according to the Secretary’s office.
