RANDOLPH — Matthew Drost has won a third term as selectman for the town of Randolph.
Matthew Drost
He won with 429 votes and was challenged by Valerien Bolduc and Andrew Pitteroff, who earned 340 and 124 votes, respectively.
Both Bolduc and Pitteroff were running for a first term.
The results were announced by the town at 11:45 p.m., a little more than three and a half hours after polls closed Tuesday.
Town Clerk Lynn Mealey said earlier in the night that Randolph’s voter turnout was 916 at 5 p.m., including 520 absentee ballots that were dropped off or mailed in before Election Day.
Fifty voters registered to vote at the polls Tuesday.
She said voter turnout is one of the larger ones she has seen for a presidential election during her time as a town clerk.
By 8 a.m., there was a line of voters from the entrance, to around the corner of Randolph Town Hall, where voting took place; however, Mealey said that most of the crowd was for the presidential election.
“The municipal race doesn’t seem to gather a lot of momentum with people,” she said. “We have had people that decided not to vote (for the selectman race).
But Drost was still able to pull through with the votes.
He ran on a campaign that focused on his record as selectman, especially through the coronavirus pandemic. He highlighted his work on improving the infrastructure in the town and his ability to be fiscally responsible with the town budget.
“I want to continue the significant progress this board has made improving infrastructure and making sure that Randolph is a place that adults and families want to live in,” Drost said in a previous interview for the Kennebec Journal.
In his upcoming term, he wants to focus on using grants to fund town projects and, “to expand tax base in improving housing availability in the community and attract businesses to the area.”
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