Polls open as voters set to choose statewide candidates, decide ballot questions

Andrea Campbell, candidate for state Attorney General, is shown with her family and supporters outside Lower Mills Library, where she votes, on Tues., Nov. 8, 2022. Bill Walczak photo

Polls opened at 7 am, with statewide offices, Congressional and State House races, and policy questions on the ballot. Polls are set to close at 8 pm.

The statewide offices include governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, and auditor. Congressional races as well as races for state senator and state representative are also on the ballot.

Andrea Campbell, a Mattapan resident, is the Democratic nominee for state attorney general. A former district city councillor who represented Dorchester and Mattapan, she faces Republican Jay McMahon, a Bourne attorney.

She plans to vote at Lower Mills Library in the morning, as she did in the September primary, before an afternoon stop at Santarpio’s pizza shop in East Boston with state Sen. Lydia Edwards, a former Council colleague, and other contenders for statewide offices. Campbell also plans a visit to Newton polls with Congressman Jake Auchincloss.

Campbell set to join other Massachusetts Democrats at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel after polls close.

Republicans are gathering at the Boston Harbor Hotel.

Bill Galvin, who as secretary of state is the state’s top elections official, said he expects 45 percent of registered voters to have cast ballots in the 2022 general election, a much lower number than in previous midterms.

Ballot questions appear to be generating more enthusiasm than the candidates, Galvin told reporters on Monday.

The questions would impose a surtax on household incomes over $1 million, also known as the millionaires tax (Question 1), regulate dental insurers (Question 2), rework alcohol licensing laws (Question 3), and whether a new law should stand, involving immigrants without legal status being allowed to hold driver’s licenses (Question 4).

According to Galvin’s office, 188,000 people have voted in person during early voting, and 839,000 people voted through the mail.

Material from State House News Service was used in this report.

Topics: 


Subscribe to the Dorchester Reporter