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BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Candidates in Boston's municipal elections, and many residents, will be waiting with bated breath for results to trickle in on Tuesday night. Polls close in the city at 8:00 PM. Unofficial numbers will be tallied immediately by precinct officials after polls close, and will start to show up on the city's Elections Department website very soon after.
Complicating the process is the new addition of no-excuse absentee ballots this election, which were not present in former years. Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin told WBZ NewsRadio that mail-in ballots were being loaded into the system throughout the day on Tuesday. One specific category of mail-ins — ballots that arrive at City Hall too late to be sent to individual polling places — can only be counted after election officials check that the mail-in voters haven't voted in-person.
A clear picture of the election may be delayed late into the night in very close races, where the final winner will be determined by the later mail-in votes.
Those ballots may not even start to be tallied until after 10:00 PM.
In the preliminary election on September 14, the first votes came in early after polls closed on Election Day, but the final unofficial count wasn't fully tallied until mid-morning the next day.
Early voting ballots will be processed at City Hall in view of the public, starting at 8:00 PM.
Precincts that have a large number of early voters will be processed at City Hall's Iannella Chamber, which will be open to public observers.
WBZ's Jim MacKay (@JimMacKayOnAir) has more:
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