WALTHAM, MA — If you were out and about today you might have noticed a number of people decked out in ponchos, rain coats and holding umbrellas as they balanced campaign signs out front of schools. Today, Tuesday, Sept. 19. was election day. Not the big citywide election day, it was the preliminary elections. The polls closed at 8 p.m. And by 9 p.m. the results were in.

In Ward 1: Daniel Romard and Daniel Keleher will be on the November 7 ballot with 374 and 345 votes respectively. Matt Waddick was right behind with 317 votes but will not move on. In Ward 5: The November race will be between Joey LaCava who got 269 votes and Christina Montgomery who received 131 votes. Sally Collura only got 12o votes.

In Ward 8: Look for John Qualters, with his 177 votes, and CathyAnn Harris, with her 145 votes, in November. Lisa Limonciello, 60 votes, did not make it. (( Excuse me, have you signed up for the free breaking news Waltham Patch newsletter, yet? You can do that now by clicking here. ))



Despite the rain, a number of people came out to vote in Wards 1, 5, and 8, where the city was holding preliminary elections to winnow the number of contestants from three to two for the November ballot. "It's perfectly the same in terms of the number of people coming out to vote," said Ward 8 Warden William Durkee of this preliminary election compared with past preliminaries in the city. "The rain hasn't worsened enough to hold people back, and everyone seems happy."

Here are the numbers:



The US Census lists Waltham as having a population of 63,002. Of those, only 33,787 are registered to vote, according to the Assistant City Clerk Joe Vizzard. Of the 12,710 registered to vote by the end of the day 1,938 people cast a vote. That's roughly 15 percent (15.25 percent) of the registered voters in the wards with elections. (Editor's Note: We got our math wrong the first time.)

As of 11: 23 a.m., some 200 people had cast ballots in Ward 5, where 4,227 are registered to vote as Christina Montgomery and Joey LaCava stood outside holding signs with friends and family members in the rain. As of noon there were no signs for Sally Collura, the other person on the ballot for that ward. But the two didn't seem to mind.