Elections officials worked until midnight counting ballots from today's City Council and School Committee elections. Many of the 20 candidates vying for nine council positions were in the room, waiting for the unofficial numbers to be announced.

Majorie Decker's sticker campaign (she missed the filing deadline, so her name wasn't on the ballot) is the first major write-in campaign since the city's computerized its ballots. The abundance of so-called "auxiliary ballots" (which have write-ins or stickers) which could not be read by scanners created a challenge for election officials. Back in September, the Board of Election Commissioners voted on whether or not to have a specific plan for dealing with the auxiliaries, but reached a 2-to-2 stalemate. Ethridge A. King Jr., chair of the board, discusses the vote and the plan going forward in the attached video.

There were 3,590 auxiliary ballots to be counted, and the official numbers won't be announced until November 13th. Update numbers will be available here this afternoon.