Will Rosemary, election director for the city of Lowell, held a public drawing of names on Aug. 12 to determine the order of candidates on the preliminary ballot for city council races in Districts 3, 7 and 8.
Rosemary said the preliminary election is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 9, and that voters in the affected districts may verify their ward and precinct at voteinma.com or via the secretary of state's voter lookup tool. "Welcome to the drawing of names for the 2025 preliminary ballot," he said as he began the process.
The drawing produced the following preliminary-ballot order as announced by Rosemary: District 3 ' Position 1: Daniel Finn; Position 2: Corey A. Belanger; Position 3: Aaron/Erin M. Gendron (name pronounced inconsistently in the recording); Position 4: Belinda M. Duran. District 7 ' Position 1: Jose De Jesus Cervantes; Position 2: Sydney L. Liang; Position 3: Paul (name pronounced inconsistently in the recording). District 8 ' Position 1: Francisco Maldonado Jr.; Position 2: Marcos A. Candido Jr.; Position 3: John G. Dakota.
Rosemary said the drawing was done "in accordance with the law" and that names would be placed in envelopes, shuffled in a barrel and pulled at random. He noted the city will send the candidate names to the city's ballot vendor immediately and expected to have approved and sample ballots posted online by the end of next week.
Key dates and procedures announced by Rosemary:
- Preliminary election: Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025. Polling locations open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on election day.
- Voter registration deadline for new and updated registrations (in person): Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025, at 5 p.m.; online registrations accepted until midnight that day.
- Vote-by-mail applications (online or paper) must be received by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, to be in order for the Sept. 9 preliminary. Applications may be submitted via the secretary of state's portal at mailmyballotma.com or by paper application filed with the election office.
- Early voting: the Election Commission voted on an early-voting schedule and Rosemary said it is pending city council approval; he anticipated early voting for the preliminary from Saturday, Aug. 30 through Friday, Sept. 6, likely at the senior center.
- Printed ballots and mail ballots: Rosemary said printed ballots would be sent to print immediately and gave a "drop-dead" date of Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, as the latest week for mailed ballots to be received by voters who requested them.
Rosemary also reviewed several polling locations and precinct assignments for affected wards, telling voters to verify their assigned polling place at voteinma.com. He named specific sites during the announcement, including the Riley School and the senior center, and said Lowell High School is expected to be available for certain precincts after construction walls were removed.
On a lighter note, Rosemary said the office was retiring an old machine he described as the literacy-test machine ' "which was banned by the Voting Rights Act in 1965" ' and that the office borrowed a gold-colored bingo-style barrel from the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce for the drawing. "We're retiring this," he said of the older device.
Dana Seck, identified by Rosemary as a MassHire intern and his assistant, assisted with affixing names to sample ballots during the drawing.
Rosemary closed the session by reiterating the next steps: sending candidate names to the ballot vendor, completing approvals, posting sample ballots online and beginning printing so mailed ballots can be produced and distributed on the timetable he described. "I will return downstairs. We will immediately be sending these candidate names to our ballot vendor," he said.
The drawing and announcements were administrative actions by the election office to set ballot order and communicate logistics; no council votes or policy decisions were taken during the session.