By Sara Brown, Globe Correspondent

Amid light turnout, voters yesterday elected a few new faces to high-profile positions in Arlington and Burlington.

Arlington's voters chose two new members for the School Commitee: Kirsi C. Allison-Ampe, a physician and researcher, and Judson L. Pierce, an attorney. They will fill the seats vacated by Denise Burns and Ronald Spangler, who opted against seeking reelection.

Allison-Ampe received 3,257 votes and Pierce received 2,988 votes in today's town election, defeating Teresa R. Bottoni (1,422 votes) and Kurt W. Fusaris (1,692).

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By Brian McGrory, Globe Staff

I’m going to need some Advil and a cold compress, please. I’m the Massachusetts Electorate, and I have what is bar none the absolute worst hangover of my entire voting life.

Seriously, I was so drunk on power, so caught up in the moment, so free of any of my usual inhibitions, I can’t remember what’s gone on these last two weeks. Think, Electorate, think. What did I do?

This much I’m starting to remember. Martha and I walked into the party and everything seemed to be going fine. She wasn’t talking much, but she never really does, and she wasn’t exactly pushing me to bare my soul, either. That’s what I’ve always liked about Martha: She’s a low-maintenance politician.

And now I’m vaguely recalling that stranger across the room, the one in the barn jacket who kept smiling at me and seemed to know my name. Martha vanished for a while, and – is it bad that I’m saying this? -- I didn’t really care.

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By Felicia Kazer

Boston teacher Felicia Kazer tells how Barack Obama's election transformed McCormack Middle School in Dorchester the day after the historic vote, stirring excitement, a sense of possibility, and unbridled joy in her students.

Wednesday was a great day to be a teacher.

The excitement started as soon as I entered the school in the morning. It turns out that a small group of students arrived before classes started to decorate our hallways with Barack Obama posters.

They had photocopied pictures of Obama's face. Under it they had written one word: "President."

By the time the rest of the student body arrived, our whole school had been plastered with these signs.

At 7:14 a.m., the hallways at my school looked very familiar: crowded, hectic and loud. Only on this morning, students weren't ignoring their teacher's requests to get to their homerooms because they were too busy gossiping about shoes or TV last night or one another.

Instead, they were simply too busy to get to class on time because they were all talking politics with their friends. It was stunning to overhear conversations between eighth-graders that included words like: electoral votes, democracy, and ballots. And it wasn't just a few kids -- it was all of them.

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McCain won in the red communities. They were few and far between.

By Casey Ramsdell, Globe Correspondent, and Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

The tiny town of Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard took the prize for being the biggest stronghold for presidential candidate Barack Obama in Massachusetts, with 90 percent of the 311 voters there casting a ballot for the Democrat who will be America’s first black president.

“It was not unexpected for me, as the clerk, that it would be that way,” said Carolyn Feltz, the town clerk. She said Aquinnah was a "politically liberal town."

With only 15 Republicans among the town's 398 registered voters, "You don't have to be a genius" to know which way the community will vote, she said. McCain actually got 26 votes, she said, meaning that McCain had wooed some voters away from the Democrats, unenrolled, and other parties.

Other communities that came out overwhelmingly for Obama included Cambridge (88 percent), Provincetown (88 percent), Amherst (87 percent), Shutesbury (85 percent), and Pelham (85 percent).

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(Bill Brett for The Boston Globe)

By Matt Viser and Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

A beaming Governor Deval Patrick met with reporters today after his return from Chicago and reiterated that he has no interest in a post in President-elect Barack Obama's administration.

After speaking about being "enormously moved and excited and proud" of Obama's electoral landslide, Patrick said definitively that he did not want to return to the White House.

"Are you asking me if I am going to Washington again?" Patrick asked, rephrasing a reporter's question. "No I am not. We have an ambitious agenda and a lot of work to do here. Frankly if the people will have me, I'd be interested in a second term."

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By John R. Ellement, Globe Staff

Massachusetts set a new record for voter turnout Tuesday. More than 3 million residents went to the polls as voters overwhelmingly chose Democrat Barack Obama as the country's next president.

Secretary of State William Galvin said in a telephone interview today that the tally of voter turnout has reached 3,042,959, up from the 2.9 million who participated in the 2004 presidential election. He said the totals could rise to 3.1 million when overseas ballots are finally tabulated in the coming days.

"It was an election not to be missed,'' Galvin said. He noted that roughly half the state's 6 million residents participated. "It's impressive.''

The percentage of the 4.2 million registered voters who participated -- about 72 percent -- was not a record.

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(Video by Milton Valencia)

Dozens of young people, elated at Obama's victory, splashed in the reflecting pool at the Christian Science Plaza.

By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff, and Gabrielle Dunn, Globe Correspondent

Hundreds of revelers, mostly college students and 20-somethings, took to the streets in Boston early today to celebrate Barack Obama’s triumph in Tuesday’s elections.

Dozens jumped into the reflecting pool at the Christian Science Center after marching from the Boston Public Library, along Huntington Avenue, waving Obama signs and chanting, “USA, USA, USA.”

“It was the excitement of it all,” said Becky Tinker, a 19-year-old sophomore from Connecticut who attends Emerson College. “This was such a historic night, why not do what you want?”

Police reported no arrests as of 12:45 a.m. Wednesday. Instead, police seemed to let the crowd celebrate, guiding revelers along streets while patrolling the area on motorcycles to make sure no one was acting disorderly.

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By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff

Sixty-six-year-old Jake Coakley picked cotton as a boy in Beaufort, S.C., just as his father and grandfather did before him. So on Tuesday, as he stood amid a throng of people hugging, high-fiving, and even weeping outside a Roxbury polling place, he wanted to underscore the significance of the day.

‘‘This,’’ he said to a little boy, patting his head and staring deeply into his eyes, ‘‘is history.’’

At another polling station blocks away, Charles Robinson recalled the racial epithets shouted at him as a student at South Boston High School during the busing crisis of the 1970s.

In St. Petersburg, Fla., Ron Dock spoke of the day he learned that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot. Dock was 18, he said, crouching in a rice paddy in Vietnam, preparing for a firefight. In Alexandria, Va., 83-year-old Flossie Parks recalled turning 21 and being forced to pay a $3 poll tax for the right to vote.

Millions of black voters across the country turned out to help elect Barack Obama the first African-American president yesterday, and as they did, they reflected not just on the course of a historic campaign, but on the history of a nation. From Florida to Arizona, Chicago to Boston, black Americans said they were writing a new chapter in a progression that began long before Obama burst onto the scene at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. The moment was tinged with poignancy at the prices paid by generations before them who could have never imagined a black man winning the highest office in the land.

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(Essdras Suarez/Globe Staff)

Beverly Rock of Dorchester waved her cane as she and others celebrated word of Barack Obama's presidential victory at the Fairmont Copley Plaza.

By Jillian Jorgensen, Globe Correspondent

The big moment came at 11 p.m. when the networks declared that Barack Obama was the winner.

The crowd of several hundred at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston erupted into applause and began chanting, "Yes, we can." People danced to the oldie, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," and sang along with "We Are The Champions."

"I'm feeling great," said 16-year-old Robert Dabbas of the South End, who came to the event with his mother.

Caroline Osterman of Arlington, who said she had worked for both Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic candidate for Senate in New Hampshire, and Obama, said, "I really like the fact that we are going to have change in America. It's about time that we Americans take care of America first."

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(David Kamerman/Globe Staff)

Christine Dorchak, president of Grey2K USA, a greyhound advocacy group, cheered with Kathy Estridge, Leslie Scheideler, and Tracy Casner, during a party for supporters of the dog racing ban at a Boston nightclub.

By Stephanie Ebbert, Globe Staff

Massachusetts voters today embraced a ballot question to end greyhound racing in the state, rejecting track owners’ arguments that the ban would cost jobs at a time of economic hardship in favor of protecting dogs from harm.

The contentious ballot question passed amid emotional ad campaigns by both sides. Proponents used images of sad-eyed greyhounds that they say are caged inhumanely and raced to injury while opponents put the spotlight on the track employees who would be put out of work if the ballot question passed.

"It's not fair to the dogs," said Dulce Fajardo, 41, a Roxbury Democrat who voted for the ballot question. "I love animals. And for me this is something cruel. They can't defend themselves so we have to do it for them."

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