Hello all,

Wow, it’s March already – I hope everyone’s excited for Spring! Here’s a quick update covering tomorrow’s election. Feel free to reach out with any questions or issues not covered here.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 5th, is the Massachusetts Presidential Primary Election! You may already have mailed in a ballot or voted early in-person. If you are voting in person on Tuesday, the polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School Gymnasium located at 90 Melrose St. Note: If you have a mail-in ballot to turn in, you cannot return it at the polling location. Instead, they can be dropped in the secure ballot box next to the post office or submitted to the elections office leading up to and on election day.

Here’s some additional information about what you can expect to see on your ballot:

Ballots differ by parties.

If you’re registered as a Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian, that’s the ballot you’ll receive! Otherwise, you’ll get to choose which primary to vote in when you go to vote. This does not register you with a party; it’s simply a choice for 1 day. Here’s more information about that.

You can see sample ballots online. 

There is a file for each party, and you can scroll through the files to see sample ballots for each ward. Here they are: https://www.cityofmelrose.org/elections/pages/2024-presidential-primary-sample-ballots  

It’s not just a Presidential Primary.

In addition to voting for Presidential nominees, we also have Ward Committee members and State Committee representatives on our ballots this election. See below for more detail!

What is a Ward Committee, and why are we voting for members?

The Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties in Melrose are structured by ward, which are the same wards used when voting for City Council etc. Each ward can have up to 35 people who officially make up each party’s political committees in Melrose. The ward committees individually, and the overall city committee, will do things like host candidate debates, run street cleanups, collect donations, support candidates, educate voters on issues, support national issues through phone banks or in-person canvassing, elect representatives to the State Convention, and more. If it's something you're interested in, you could attend a meeting or reach out to the committee of your choice. People can become members either during the year by attending group meetings and being voted in there, or by putting their name on a ballot like this one. I am on the Ward 5 democratic ballot in this election, along with 3 others. You can vote for up to 35 people.

What is the State Committee?

Our ballots also have candidates for State Committee Man and State Committee Woman. These are elections that are held to elect two people from each of Massachusetts’s 40 districts to the State-level party committees. State committees cooperate with both national committees and local committees, work to elect their parties candidates, and influence the policy direction of their parties.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for voting. 

Feel free to ask any additional questions, and I’ll do my best to help.