Election Commission Publishes Report on 2025 Municipal Election Preliminary Unofficial Results Discrepancy Findings & Refined Processes

On Election Night on November 4, 2025, technical errors were inadvertently made by a technician from LHS, Associates, Inc (LHS) that affected the preliminary unofficial results. The City contracts with LHS to provide a variety of election services, including but not limited to technical support, election equipment purchase and maintenance, election software purchase and support, election day/night onsite technical support, and technical assistance in producing election results. LHS is the ImageCast Precinct Tabulator and ImageCast Central (high speed scanner) exclusive authorized vendor in the New England region. Therefore, LHS is the only company that can provide services, such as the services listed above, for the ImageCast Tabulators. After discovering these technical errors, Election Commission staff worked with its retained election auditor and Jeff Silvestro, President of LHS, to identify and correct the errors in advance of releasing updated Municipal Election unofficial results on Friday, November 7.

The following report provides a summary of findings regarding how these errors occurred, how they were discovered, how they were corrected, and steps the Election Commission and LHS are taking to prevent these or similar errors from reoccurring in future elections. This report also provides additional background information regarding how the Election Commission prepares for elections, how ballots are processed for municipal elections in Cambridge, and the reasons why Election Night results are always announced as preliminary and unofficial only.

PDF Link to Report