Preliminary now past, Lowell looks to general election

LOWELL — With the first preliminary balloting of the new municipal election system in the books, the city will now shift its focus to the Nov. 2 general election.

Interim Director of Elections Elliott Veloso said the administration of the preliminary election and its five polling locations went well, providing a level of confidence for the larger election to come in six weeks.

“This is the first election in which the city has used the electronic poll pads to check in voters, and the response that I have received so far from both poll workers and voters is that it’s a very smooth process and it allows voters to be checked in quicker than the previous books that we’ve been using,” Veloso said.

He confirmed there was a bit of confusion among a small number of voters who thought they could vote for more than one candidate in the preliminary, but in those instances, the AccuVote machines rejected the double- or triple-marked ballots and poll workers provided voters with new ballots and instructions. He said there were also some instances of voters showing up to the wrong polling locations, and poll workers, using information available through the poll pads, directed them to their appropriate place to vote.

Despite a number of outreach efforts by the city — including mailers, social media posts and informational videos both online and on local TV — the turnout Tuesday was low, Veloso said, and officials are hopeful for greater turnout in November. He said the city will continue to examine its outreach efforts, “and do everything we can to ensure voters are informed of the upcoming election.”

Among the four City Council districts in play Tuesday, Belvidere (District 3) had the highest turnout at 15.3%, and the Acre (District 7) had the lowest at 5.8%. The other two districts weren’t much better than the Acre, with Downtown (District 4) at 6.1% and Centralville (District 2) at 8.3%. The overall turnout between the four districts was only 9.14% — a slight reduction from the 9.48% of the 2019 City Council preliminary held under the former all at-large system, itself a reduction from the 11.79% turnout in the 2017 preliminary, according to city election data.

Those previous two municipal election years also saw a similar reduction in turnout in the general election, from 21.29% in 2017 to 18.61% in 2019.

This year’s change to a hybrid district and at-large system for both the City Council and School Committee was spurred by a federal lawsuit filed in 2017 by a group of Asian American and Latino voters who alleged the city’s all at-large system denied them and Lowell voters generally the equal opportunity to fair representation required under the U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act. The lawsuit argued the citywide voting system diluted the minority vote in the city and allowed white voters to vote as a bloc.

In recent years, that power had concentrated in Belvidere, and the plaintiffs sought to level the playing field and increase participation for both candidates and voters.

Councilor William Samaras, who along with Mayor John Leahy will advance to this year’s general election for a chance to represent the Belvidere district, said he was “very disappointed” in the preliminary turnout, because the expectation was the changes would make more people feel they could get involved and vote.

He pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as a culprit, both in shifting the general public’s focus away from the election and removing large, in-person opportunities that would normally be used to inform people. Going door-to-door, Samaras said the number of people he’s encountered who just don’t know how significant the election changes are show that there’s a lot more work to be done ahead of Nov. 2.

Where the all at-large system was often a popularity contest, under the new hybrid system, candidates have to really prove they can understand both the needs of their neighborhoods and the larger issues affecting the entire city, Samaras said.

“People were always critical of Belvidere, that it had so much power — it’s because people get out and vote,” Samaras said. “Instead of being critical of Belvidere, let’s see how we can work together to make every district come out and want to vote like in Belvidere.”

Paul Ratha Yem, who topped the ticket in the Acre district Tuesday and will advance to the general election along with David Ouellette, said he attributes the abysmal turnout in his majority-minority district to the large number of immigrants who are not as tuned-in to the process as born-and-raised Lowellians, and in some instances, still carry fears of persecution from their countries of origin.

“In other parts of the world, going out to vote, to exercise your right, is suppressed,” Yem said. “Some of these people from different parts of the world, including older Cambodians, still have that in the back of their mind.”

While the turnout wasn’t as strong as he’d hoped, Yem said he was touched to hear from many voters of different backgrounds Tuesday that they were excited to support him as their voice on the council and to discuss the Cambodian community’s contributions to the city.

He said that when he came to America as a young man, he was told he could find great opportunity if he worked hard, and that is what he will continue to do in educating his fellow immigrants to get out and vote so he can help them improve their quality of life.

Here’s the rundown of the races to be decided Nov. 2, with candidates listed in alphabetical order:

City Council At-large (three seats)
1. Deborah Belanger
2. John Drinkwater (incumbent)
3. Robert Hoey Jr.
4. Rita Mercier (incumbent)
5. Vesna Nuon (incumbent)
6. Bobby Tugbiyele

City Council District 1 (Pawtucketville)
1. Rodney Elliott (incumbent)
2. Daniel Rourke (incumbent)

City Council District 2 (Centralville)
1. Robert Gignac
2. Corey Robinson

City Council District 3 (Belvidere)
1. John Leahy (incumbent)
2. William Samaras (incumbent)

City Council District 4 (Downtown/Back Central/portions of Pawtucketville and Centralville)
1. Wayne Jenness Jr.
2. Ryan Rourke

City Council District 5 (South Lowell)
1. Kimberly Scott
2. Tooch Van

City Council District 6 (Lower Highlands)
1. Sokhary Chau (incumbent)
2. Justin Ford

City Council District 7 (The Acre)
1. David Ouellette
2. Paul Ratha Yem

City Council District 8 (The Highlands)
1. Ty Chum
2. Erik Gitschier

School Committee At-large (two seats):
1. Michael Dillon Jr. (incumbent)
2. Jacqueline Doherty (incumbent)
3. Connie Martin (incumbent)
4. James Peters

School Committee District 1 (Council Districts 1 and 8)
1. Benjamin Opara
2. Stacey Thompson

School Committee District 2 (Council Districts 4 and 2)
1. Hilary Clark (incumbent)
2. Eileen DelRossi

School Committee District 3 (Council Districts 3 and 5)
1. Susie Chhoun
2. Andre Descoteaux (incumbent)

School Committee District 4 (Council Districts 6 and 7)
1. Cheth Khim
2. Dominik Lay (incumbent)

Voters will also be tasked with answering a nonbinding ballot question that asks whether the voters should be able to elect Lowell’s mayor directly in municipal elections, or to continue the current system through which the mayor is selected by newly elected council members at the beginning of each two-year term.