Voting Information

City of Lowell, Massachusetts voting information, resources, and links.

About Your City Elections

A primary election, if there are enough candidates for any of the elected bodies to trigger one, will be held on Tuesday, September 27th 2011 and the general election will be Tuesday, November 8th 2011.

You can visit the city's web page for the Election and Census Commission here. You can request a voter registration or absentee ballot form there, and find contact info for the department. If you need assistance in finding your voting location, you can click here.

Candidates standing for election have until August 9th to submit their nomination papers, so the field of candidates will not be set until then, though many candidates announce as early as February through around early June, since not only do they need to meet a lot of voters, but also raise funds and plan their campaigns.

There are 3 races (Lowell City Council, Lowell School Committee and Greater Lowell Technical High School Committee). All seats are city-wide and all seats are open, though you might hear about "open" seats versus incumbents - this is due to incumbents announcing that they are not running for their current seat. But technically, all seats are up for grabs in all three elected bodies.

You may vote for up to 9 candidates for City Council, 6 candidates for the Lowell School Committee, and 2 candidates for the Greater Lowell Tech School Committee (two of Lowell's four four-year term seats), and each vote counts equally. You may vote for fewer than the limit in each race if you wish to declare your preference for a smaller number of candidates - this is called "bullet voting" and it has the effect of concentrating your vote for those candidates.

As the campaign season moves along, we'll update these pages with more information.