Boston City Charter is amended.

By a margin of 39,170 to 35,270, voters approve changes in the charter that establish non-partisan elections, strengthen the mayor’s office, and replaces the 13-member Board of Aldermen and 75-member Boston Common Council with a nine-member City Council, elected at-large in which three members are elected every year to three-year terms. The amended charter retains the five-member School Committee, elected at-large, and establishes a permanent Financial Commission. The Boston Evening Transcript calls the amended charter “A death blow [to] machine politics.” The changes, which James Michael Curley later writes were, “apparently designed to get rid of me,” take effect in January 1910.