Beverly City Clerk Looks Back At 'Great Election Season'

BEVERLY, MA — A mayoral challenge, several contested City Council races and a double write-in campaign for School Committee drew 28 percent of registered Beverly voters to the polls for the general election.

City Clerk Lisa Kent called this year a "great election season" as her office settled into a second year of early "no excuse" mail-in voting and early voting. Beverly had one day of early voting this year scheduled for 10 days before the general election.

"We talked about early voting at length and decided that one day on a Saturday would be enough," Kent said. "With absentee voting by mail, in-person absentee voting and vote-by-mail early voting, we believe our voters were given every opportunity to vote. Having early voting on a Saturday gave us at the clerk's office the ability to staff it ourselves.

"It is always fun to chat with the voters who come in (for early voting). On election day, we don't get to interact with them as we do in early voting."

Ward 4, Precinct 2 and Ward 6 were the two busiest precincts. In Ward 4, there was a double write-in campaign for School Committee between Jeffrey Silva and Lindsay Ducharme. Ward 6 included a contested City Council race between Matt St. Hilaire and Dominic Copeland.

Mayor Mike Cahill was able to fend off a challenge from Dr. Esther Ngotho to win a fifth term.

"We always wish for a higher turnout but we will take 28 percent for our local election," Kent said.

While masks were still strongly encouraged for in-person voting, the waning coronavirus crisis allowed for a bit more of a traditional election season than in 2020.

"We could not do this without our staff here at the clerk's office, our registrars, Our DPW guys who bring everything to the polling locations every election and all the election workers that show up and work hard," Kent said. "It is such a long day, we appreciate them.

"It really is a team effort."

Kent said official results will be posted on Nov. 12 but that she does not expect significant changes from the unofficial results that went up on election night.

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(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)

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