Boston's Drop Boxes Close for Part of the Weekend, Ballots Come on Three Cards, and Precinct Results Won't Come Until Wednesday

Boston's Election Department published its final set of reminders for the Nov. 3 state election on Friday, and several details in it matter for voters who have not yet cast a ballot. The most immediate: every ballot drop box in the city may be closed for part of the weekend.

According to the department, all ballot drop boxes "will be closed as early as 8am on October 31 and reopened on November 1 by 2:00 pm." The notice does not give a reason. During that window, voters can wait until the boxes reopen or deliver a ballot to the Election Department in City Hall, Room 241. After Sunday afternoon, the 22 drop boxes stay open to accept ballots until 8 p.m. on Election Day.

The department also repeated that ballots cannot be returned to a polling location on Election Day. Mail ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 must reach the department by 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6. Voters can track a mail ballot through the state's Track My Ballot site; if it shows no movement, the department advises planning to vote in person at the assigned precinct.

The numbers in the notice give a picture of the city's election. Boston has 443,178 registered voters across 275 precincts. The department says it has recruited and trained more than 2,002 poll workers, and that more than 483 of them can assist voters in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean, Russian and Portuguese. Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m.

Early turnout figures in the notice are a few days old. As of Monday, Oct. 26, 10,083 voters had voted at in-person early voting sites. The department had mailed all 69,759 requested vote-by-mail and absentee ballots, and as of Sunday, Oct. 25, had received 29,269 back. The total received by mail and early voting was listed as 39,352. Measured against the registration total, that is about 8.9% of Boston's registered voters as of those dates, a figure that will rise because early voting continued through Friday and mail ballots are still arriving.

The ballot itself is long. Voters will choose the governor, a U.S. senator, members of the U.S. House and the state Legislature and other offices, and will decide nine statewide ballot questions. The department says each voter will receive three double-sided ballot cards. They should feed the cards into the tabulator one at a time and wait for the screen to say "system ready" before inserting the next card or leaving.

Check-in uses electronic Poll Pads. Printed ballots are available in English and Spanish, and in English and Chinese and English and Vietnamese where required, with interpreters available on request. All polling places are wheelchair accessible and have an AutoMark Voter Assist Terminal for voters with disabilities.

The notice also explains why some results will come later than others. Since Monday, Oct. 26, workers have been removing early and mail ballots from envelopes and feeding them into a tabulator in Room 801 of City Hall, daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Only ballots received before Friday, Oct. 30, go through that process, and those processed by 5 p.m. Friday will be centrally tabulated. On Election Day, processing may start at 7 a.m. and continue until all ballots are done.

After the polls close, the department will upload unofficial results as materials come back from precincts, but uploads may not begin until 10 p.m. Election night totals will include early and mail ballots counted centrally. They will not include hand-counted ballots recorded in precinct clerks' books after the polls close, or mail and absentee ballots that arrive on time on Election Day but too late to be sent to polling places. Those are processed after 8 p.m., once precinct voter lists reach the department. Other on-time ballots will be counted at a later date the department says it will announce.

Precinct-level unofficial results are expected by 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4. Election night pages will show only citywide or districtwide totals for each candidate.

The notice includes rules for the press and observers. Reporters must stay behind the guardrail, the area around the check-in table, voting booths and ballot box. Photography and video are allowed from outside it, though marked ballots may not be photographed, and audio recording inside a polling place is not permitted under state law. Exit polling is allowed outside, within 150 feet of a polling place, as long as it does not block voters.

The department did not say why the drop boxes may close over the weekend or how many ballots have arrived since Oct. 26. The Secretary of the Commonwealth's office publishes statewide turnout data.