More than half of the voters who took out ballots for early voting waited until Election Day or the day before to turn in those ballots, and election and city councillors who gathered for a roundtable wondered why.

Election Commissioners completed a count of provisional and overseas absentee ballots on Friday, making official the results from Nov. 2. Those elected to the City Council and School Committee didn’t change, and three ballot questions changing the city charter were approved by wide margins. 

A count of the city’s write-in and auxiliary ballots over Wednesday and Thursday hasn’t changed who will sit on next term’s City Council and School Committee, or the results of three ballot questions that reform the city charter. 

Challengers Paul Toner and Burhan Azeem were elected to the City Council and incumbent Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler was defeated in a preliminary count completed at 1:10 a.m. Wednesday, while newcomer Akriti Bhambi was elected to the School Committee.

Voters approved three ballot questions Tuesday dealing with the city charter, according to a preliminary vote count by election commissioners.

Two years ago, in my first Cambridge election, I voted for City Council candidates endorsed by A Better Cambridge. This year, I’m proud to do it again.

At a time of deepening racial and economic inequality, a rapidly changing climate and severe housing unaffordability, the Cambridge Residents Alliance endorses seven candidates for the 2021 City Council election.

A campaign season hobbled by the limitations of a pandemic limps to a close Tuesday, with 21 candidates in the race for nine City Council seats.

Online discourse around the year’s City Council race has become hostile, with candidates caught in the crossfire calling it more personal and less substantive than before. In one controversy, they are endorsees of a group under fire for a year-old incident that began with a different organization.

Students as young as 12 should be allowed to vote in the School Committee election, because they have the most relevant perspective of how to improve the school system: As students of the school we know what is actually going on, and we know what really needs to be fixed.