MARBLEHEAD — The town’s annual elections were thrown into chaos Tuesday evening when the town’s three polling locations, which comprise six precincts, ran out of ballots, forcing officials to photocopy ballots that could then not be counted by a machine, triggering manual hand counts and delaying results by hours.
At Abbott Hall Tuesday, where the town clerk is based, preliminary, unofficial results of the scanned ballots from Precincts 2 and 3 were available, representing a mere 1,522 ballots. Officials could be seen manually counting ballots in the second-floor auditorium at Abbott Hall.
Those preliminary unofficial results showed Jackie Belf-Becker, Moses Grader, James E. Nye, Erin M. Noonan, and Alexa J. Singer with slim leads in the Precinct 3 Board of Selectmen race. All five leading candidates are incumbents. The same five candidates were leading in the preliminary results from Precinct 2 as of the Item’s press time.
John G. Attridge held a lead over Matthew Wolverton for the town moderator position, the results showed.
Two ballot questions were put before the town during this year’s elections. Ballot question one, an override for a five-year, $12.5 million road and sidewalk management program, won approval from voters in both precincts, according to the unofficial results. Question two, a proposition two-and-a-half tax override to provide an extra $3.1 million to the town’s School Department budget, on the other hand, faced overwhelming defeat in both precincts, the results showed.
Voters also appeared to choose Pam M. Peterson over Rose Ann Wheeler McCarthy for a one-year term on the cemetery commission, the unofficial results showed.
Incumbent Helaine Hazlett trailed challenger Thomas R. McMahon in the race for a position on the town’s board of health, according to the preliminary results.
The results also showed Walter E. Homan and Michael A. Hull with leads in the race for the municipal light commission in Precinct 3, while Jeanjacques Yarmanoff held a lead over Homan in Precinct 2.
Sarah A. Fox and Alison Taylor were leading Reece Dhalberg in the race for school committee, according to the preliminary results.
The remainder of the races put to voters Tuesday — including recreation and park commission and town clerk — were uncontested.
Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected].
