$125,000 for an election to decide nothing?

LYNN – With a $125,000 price tag and zero impact on local election candidates’ fortunes, the city’s Sept. 1 preliminary election is poised to be cancelled.City Council President Daniel Cahill confirmed councilors will be asked Tuesday night to vote on scheduling a July 21 public hearing allowing residents to discuss scrapping the preliminary.If councilors and state legislators vote to cancel the preliminary, the names of every candidate who submitted nomination papers to run for city office will be listed on the Nov. 3 final election ballot.”No one is going to be knocked off the ballot. No one is going to be disenfranchised,” said City Clerk Mary Audley.Audley and Cahill said city spending concerns are significant enough to warrant cancelling the preliminary election. Costs associated with election include paying 168 polls workers as well as police officers who work on election days.Elections involve ordering ballots, coding and testing ballot cards, renting trucks to move voting machines and ballots and advertising costs associated with informing the public in advance of the election.Audley said the 2015 municipal election has an additional public information challenge – ongoing work at North Shore Community College means Ward 4 polling places will be moved to the Lynn Museum, and the move requires extensive public notification.Audley called the preliminary election “a free poll” for candidates who want to test their popularity with the voters.”It’s a waste of money,” she said.Spelled out in the City Charter and rooted in Lynn’s political history, preliminaries are intended to pare down the number of candidates’ names listed on the final municipal election ballot to twice the number of candidates voters will elect in the final.Voters will pick four at large councilors in the final election, but only six at large candidates are listed on the preliminary ballot. Three of the seven ward council seats are contested with two candidates running in each contested race. Voters will elect six School Committee candidates in November, but only 10 candidates’ names appear on the preliminary ballot.Political newcomers and committee candidates Jared Nicholson and Michael Ouk said they are not opposed to cancelling the preliminary.”Given the fiscal challenges the city and schools have, I understand they want to be careful about how they spend money,” Nicholson said. Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy favors scrapping this year’s preliminary election – notwithstanding how significantly two preliminary elections loom in her political biography.Kennedy was a political rookie in 1991 when she ran as a write-in candidate in the preliminary election and won election in the final to the School Committee.Her history-making 2009 election to the mayor’s office began with a successful write-in campaign in the preliminary election. But Kennedy said the preliminary “accomplishes nothing but to give candidates an assessment of their strength and weaknesses.”Following public comments on the 21st, Cahill said councilors will vote to send a home rule petition to the state Legislature asking for approval of a one-time exemption from Charter language requiring a preliminary. The petition will include a provision allowing write-in candidates in the November election.”We’ve obviously had a discussion with the legislative delegation. Hopefully, the Legislature will take action at the end of July,” Cahill said.