EASTHAM — Roughly a quarter of the registered voters in Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, and Eastham participated in the state’s primary election this year on Tuesday, Sept. 3 but included more than a week of early in-person voting and the option to request a mail-in ballot.

The participation rate may seem low by Outer Cape standards, but there were no contested races on this year’s Democratic Party ballot and only one on the Republican ballot. (Presidential nominees were selected in a separate contest in March.)

Hadley Luddy, CEO of the Homeless Prevention Council, won an uncontested race for the Democratic nomination for the seat of retiring state Rep. Sarah Peake, who represents the four Outer Cape towns plus Orleans, Harwich, and Chatham. Orleans Select Board member Michael Herman had dropped his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the seat in late May.

No Republican ran for Peake’s seat in the House. A Republican nominee to run against Luddy will be named after all the write-in votes have been tallied in the seven towns in the district.

Only two Democrats ran for the two seats on the county commission, which means incumbent commissioners Mark Forest and Sheila Lyons both won their party’s nominations.

On the Republican ballot, Ron Beaty and Cynthia Stead ran for county commission as well, so both will be on the general election ballot challenging Forest and Lyons.

In races large and small, voters found they did not have many choices to make. Only at the top of the Republican ballot, in the contest for the party’s nomination for the right to take on incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, did primary voters see a contest.

In that race, Republicans here made the same choice as did their fellow party members throughout the state. John Deaton, a U.S. Marine and cryptocurrency lawyer, defeated Ian Cain and Robert Antonellis in all four Outer Cape towns and statewide.

If the Senate contest was especially exciting for Republicans, it did not appear to show in the turnout figures. Only 23 percent of Eastham’s participating voters were Republicans, below their usual share. About 13 percent of Truro and Wellfleet’s participating voters pulled Republican ballots, and only 3 percent of Provincetown’s 811 voters were Republicans.

At Eastham Town Hall

“It’s been very slow,” Eastham Town Clerk Linda Sassi told a reporter who visited that town’s polling place. “We’ve had fewer than 500 voters” in person, she said just after 5 p.m. on Tuesday after having been at town hall since 6 that morning.

Sassi blamed the multitude of uncontested races and predicted turnout would be higher in the November election.

Eastham voters who spoke to the Independent said that housing and general affordability were primary concerns. All of them across the political spectrum said they considered voting a civic duty.

“I would like more and more families to be able to live here, and it just feels less and less possible,” said Lindsey Palmer. “It’s important to have good people in government working to make this a sustainable, livable place for year-rounders.”

“Choosing local people is more important than choosing national people because that’s where major decisions are made,” said Sue Spencer.

Voters who pulled Democratic ballots said that abortion access and threats to democracy were important to them. Republican voters cited the U.S.-Mexico border and the economy as concerns. Several declined to give their names.

One woman said she was voting for Robert Antonellis, a pro-Trump Republican who lost his race for the U.S. Senate nomination.

“He is pro-honesty,” the woman said. “He is anti-illegals. He wants to return us to a non-inflationary economy. He wants to control the borders and crime.”

She also said she had to hide her political affiliation in Eastham.

“As a Republican, I don’t know many Republicans,” she said. “My friends who are Democrats do not know I am a Republican and will never know, because we are at such a divisive point right now that it would come between friendships and family connections.”

Another woman who would not give her name said she changed her voting registration from Democrat to Independent during the last primary election, citing rising prices for food, gas, and mortgages. “It’s just scary,” she said. “I don’t know how my kids are going to survive.”