Middleboro Review and so on

  View in browser   BY  LISA KASHINSKY COMMUNITY OUTREACH —  Maura Healey and Geoff Diehl are making their push for Latinos who constitute the state's second-largest ethnic bloc and who polls show are more concerned than most about their economic futures. Healey and Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll,  the Democratic nominees for governor and lieutenant governor, embarked on an “economic empowerment” tour of some of the state’s largest Latino communities on Monday. Latino-owned small businesses were  less likely to receive pandemic aid  than white-owned businesses, a recent MassINC Polling Group survey showed. The Democrats, who started their day  hearing from Chelsea business owners  who struggled through Covid-19 and are now facing supply chain woes, pledged more access to capital and financing in response. From left: Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, Colombian Boutique owner Maria Barrientos, Chelsea City Councilor and...

  View in browser   BY  LISA KASHINSKY Presented by UPS MAIL-BALLOT POST-MORTEM —  Election officials rejected more than 11,000 mail ballots cast in the state primaries, the bulk of them because they arrived too late. Of the 480,255 ballots cast by mail, 11,412 were received and rejected  and another 1,039 were marked as “failed delivery,” either because a ballot was returned to local election officials by USPS or a voter said they didn’t receive it and requested a replacement.   The 11,412 rejected ballots account for 2.3 percent of all votes cast by mail and just over 1 percent of the 1,052,414 ballots cast overall in the state primary, according to data from the secretary of state's office. The majority of rejected mail ballots, 8,070,  were tossed because they didn’t show up before 8 p.m. on primary day. Another 1,088 were discarded because the voter didn’t sign the envelope containing their ballot, while another 751 ballots were rejected because t...