Boston Elections Department announces results of comprehensive review of ward and precinct assignments

The Boston Elections Department today announced that it has concluded its six month, comprehensive review of the ward and precinct assignments and precinct lines across the entire City of Boston. As a result an additional 370 addresses, representing 850 registered voters, need to be corrected.

The corrections were accepted by the Board of Election Commissioners during a meeting this morning, Tuesday, January 12 at 10 a.m. in City Hall.

The addresses that are impacted are in the neighborhoods of Allston, Brighton, Dorchester, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Roslindale, Roxbury and South End.

“These corrections are not only necessary, but they bring our ward and precinct assignments up to speed with our modernizing City,” said Dion Irish, Commissioner of the Election Department and Chair of the Board of Election Commissioners. “We believe that many of these re-assignments will make voting more convenient for our constituents, but most importantly their addresses are now correctly assigned. I thank the staff of the Election Department, the Law Department and the Department of Innovation and Technology for their hard work on this months long process that will benefit our city and voters for years to come.”

This comprehensive review began in August 2015, when errors made in the 1960s caused the incorrect assignment of five addresses in the Lower Mill Section of Dorchester. Following the discovery of these errors the Department and the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Office agreed that a comprehensive review of all address should be conducted to ensure that voters were able to correctly exercise their voting rights. Prior to the municipal election on November 3, 2015, all address assignments were reviewed and corrected for geographical consistency with city council districts.

Following the election the review continued with a focus on all of the other aspects of our electoral boundaries. In conducting the review the Elections Department found that is was necessary to make changes to the legal descriptions and lines of certain precincts to conform to the changing physical condition of the City of Boston. Unlike other cities and towns, the City of Boston is not subject to state laws that require wards and precincts to be divided every ten years. As a result, many of the City’s precinct descriptions became outdated.