Alicia Piedalue has won Tuesday’s special election for Newton’s Ward 7 School Committee seat.

The election, in which Piedalue ran unopposed, fills a seat on the School Committee that has been vacant for more than seven months since School Committee member Amy Davenport moved out of the city.

Piedalue’s election will be certified on April 1, and then she can be sworn in for their following meeting.

And while Piedalue’s victory was expected in a one-candidate race, there are a couple of noteworthy numbers.

The turnout

There were only 3,800 votes cast citywide, which amounts to a 6.4% turnout (Newton has just under 60,000 registered voters).

Low turnout tends to be common for special elections, and this election only had one seat with one unopposed candidate.

The City Charter requires a special election for an open School Committee seat if that seat is vacated within the first 15 months of a term. Former Ward 7 School Committee member Amy Davenport started her term on Jan. 1, 2024, and was out by August because she moved out of the city. So, a special election was needed.

The City Charter also mandates the whole city be allowed to vote in the special election.

Tuesday’s special election didn’t see much foot traffic, though. The poll workers at the Ward School said that as of Tuesday afternoon they’d only had a handful of voters walk in. Much of the voting was done early and by mail.

The cost

The election cost $180,000, which comes out to $47.37 per vote.

Much of that money went toward wages, with police details, overtime and election workers’ pay adding up to almost $80,000.

The city spent more than $44,000 on postage for vote-by-mail applications and more than $37,000 on printing ballots and other paper materials.

But the ward needs a representative on the School Committee, and the City Charter has a very strict way to go about seating one.

Freedom isn’t free, inflation has given democracy a bigger price tag.

The renegades

The election had 80 write-ins. And even though Piedalue was the only candidate on the ballot, 53 people still cast blank votes.

Write-ins and blanks remained in the single digits in every precinct, but in some precincts the rogue votes made a strong showing. In Ward 5 Precinct 1, for example, there were 96 votes cast and six of them (6.25 percent) were write-ins and blanks.

In Ward 7 Precinct 4, there were 83 votes and Piedalue got 77 votes, while six ballots (7.2 percent) had blanks or write-ins.