Four days later, the state still doesn’t have the results.
Voting in the Massachusetts state primary election concluded on Tuesday, September 1 and yet, the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office said there could be even more waiting to find out whether or not Rayla Campbell will be on the ballot this upcoming November. However, the total votes cast in the primary indicate that it’s possible.
Enough write-in votes were cast in the Republican primary in the Seventh Congressional District. The question is: Did Campbell get enough of them?
The Republican from Randolph ran a write-in/sticker campaign in hopes of receiving 2,000 votes to make it onto the November ballot. If successful, she will run against U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Dorchester), one of the members of “The Squad.”
It’s unclear when the results will come in, but from what Deb O’Malley, a spokesman for the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office, told New Boston Post in an email message on Friday, there’s no guarantee they’ll even be published today.
“Clerks have until the end of the day tomorrow to certify their results and we will post the candidates once the list is finalized,” O’Malley wrote. “I won’t know the total number of votes for Rayla Campbell until after the clerks complete their certification.”
In two of the seven communities in the district, the vote totals are already official. She received 264 votes in Randolph and 21 votes that counted in Chelsea, although she received two Democratic primary votes and two Republican U.S. Senate votes as well. That’s 285 official votes in her favor.
Although there’s no public data on how many Republican write-in votes were cast in Everett, the total in the other parts of the district is at least 2,372. That’s a total of at least 2,657 write-in votes cast in the district excluding Everett, although not all of them voted for her. On The Rayla Campbell Show, her weekly radio show on WSMN 1590 AM out of Nashua, New Hampshire, Campbell said the unofficial results had about 3,200 ballots cast in the primary. For reference, there were 704 votes in the U.S. Senate primary between Kevin O’Connor and Shiva Ayyadurai in Everett.
Unofficially, there were 132 write-in votes in the district Campbell is running to represent in Cambridge, 63 in Milton, 303 in Somerville, and 1,874 in Boston. However, there could be more votes than that because the city of Somerville says that its total does not include, “absentee, provisional, overseas, or military ballots.”
Massachusetts Seventh Congressional District — known a the ‘Minority-Majority District.’ Source: Massachusetts Legislature web site
Massachusetts Seventh Congressional District towns and cities:
Middlesex County:
city of Cambridge (Wards 1, 2, and 3; Ward 4, Precinct 1; Ward 5; Ward 10, Precinct 3; Ward 11) (which includes East Cambridge and parts of North Cambridge)
cities of Everett and Somerville
Norfolk County:
town of Milton (Precincts 1, 5, and 10); town of Randolph
Suffolk County:
city of Chelsea
city of Boston (Wards 1 and 2; Ward 3, Precincts 7, 8; Ward 4; Ward 5, Precincts 1, 2, 2A, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10; Ward 7, Precinct 10; Wards 8, 9, and 10; Ward 11, Precincts 1–8; Ward 12; Ward 13, Precincts 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 9; Wards 14 and 15; Ward 16, Precincts 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11; Wards 17 and 18; Ward 19, Precincts 7, 10–13; Ward 20, Precinct 3; Wards 21 and 22);
City of Boston Wards
Matching Wards With Neighborhood
Ward 1: East Boston
Ward 2: Charlestown
Ward 3, Precincts 7 and 8: South End and Chinatown
Ward 4: Fenway and Kenmore Square
Ward 5, Precincts 1, 2, 2A, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10: Back Bay and Bay Village
Ward 7, Precinct 10: small southern portion of South Boston
