BOSTON — Boston voters will use a three-card ballot in the Nov. 3 state election, and full unofficial results may not begin appearing until 10 p.m., the city's Election Department said Thursday.

Voters statewide will choose a governor, a U.S. senator, members of the U.S. House and the Massachusetts Legislature, along with other local officials, and will decide nine ballot questions. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The city has 443,178 registered voters across 275 precincts, and the department said it has trained more than 2,002 poll workers, more than 483 of whom can help voters in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Cape Verdean, Russian and Portuguese. Each ballot will consist of three double-sided cards, and voters should feed them into the tabulator one at a time, the department said.

The department said it mailed all 69,759 requested mail-in and absentee ballots and had received 29,269 back by Oct. 25. Combined with in-person early voting, 39,352 ballots had been cast, according to the department.

Voters can return ballots at 22 drop boxes until 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 or in person at the Election Department at City Hall, but not at polling places. The drop boxes will be closed from as early as 8 a.m. on Oct. 31 until as late as 2 p.m. on Nov. 1, officials said. Mailed ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 will be counted if they arrive by 5 p.m. on Nov. 6.

Election-night results will not include some hand-counted ballots or mail ballots that arrive on Election Day too late to be sent to polling places, the department said. It expects to publish precinct-level unofficial results by 5 p.m. on Nov. 4.

This brief was drafted by AI from a public agency or political press release and published by The New England Signal. Why we use AI for stories like this one.