Nineteen-year-old Celia LeClair was motivated by the issue of abortion to cast her first-ever ballot on Tuesday, which drove her choices in the presidential and gubernatorial contests. On other races — like the school board — she didn’t feel prepared to make a choice and decided to leave them blank.

At the same time, she cast votes in both of the charter amendment races at the bottom of the ballot.

LeClair wasn’t deep into the debates about where Concord’s new middle school should go, but in the booth, she read them through, thought it over, and decided she agreed with what they proposed.

“It makes sense for parents of kids that go to a school to be able to decide over what happens with the actual school,” she said.

LeClair wasn’t alone.

Voters had the option to vote for up to three candidates from a pool of six for at-large seats on the city’s school board. Just over 21,000 Concord voters cast school district ballots on election day. Out of 63,030 possible votes for school board, only 41,920 were logged. That means the school board race saw only 66.5% participation. It’s as if one out of every three voters opted to leave their school board portion of the ballot blank, or like everyone had chosen only two candidates, instead of three.

Of course, that result comes from a mix of empty and partial school ballots, but it stands in contrast to the charter amendments, where more than 86% of those at the polls logged a vote.

Stuart McKenzie, a district parent living in the Concord Heights, had a similar approach to LeClair. When asked about the board race, he raised his eyebrows and said through a smile that he didn’t know much about it. He ended up voting for the one name on the ballot he recognized — four-term incumbent Barb Higgins. He also supported both amendments.

The same was true for Caroline Jenkins, a first-year teacher at St. Paul’s School, where the school held an assembly on Monday outlining every race, including the local ones, on the ballot. Jenkins ended up voting only for Andrew Winters. From what she learned about the candidates, she said, he was the only one she felt strongly enough about to vote for. Reading through the amendments, she agreed with their promise for voters to have more control.

“People should have a say,” she said.

Voter participation was about 20 percentage points higher for school board charter amendments versus that of school board candidates, regardless of overall participation in each ward. For example, in Wards 7 and 10, over 90% of voters made a selection on the amendments, but that participation dropped to about 70% for the school board. Similarly, even though participation was lower in Ward 6 overall, about 80% of voters made a choice on charter amendments versus roughly 58% for the school board race.

If voters like LeClair, McKenzie and Jenkins make up much of that gap, that may have buoyed the amendments’ overwhelming success.

Such voters — who may not have been closely tuned into the location debate playing out at school board meetings but who supported the premise of the amendments — were reflected in a district-wide poll done by the Monitor in the weeks prior to the election.

Roughly a third of respondents supported reversing the school board’s decision to move the middle to East Concord, and another third were unsure. But more than 70% of those polls said they believed voters should get the final say anytime the district wants to move one of its schools.

The school board, which has spent the last 11 months developing plans for a middle school in East Concord, has yet to determine how it will proceed after the passage of the charter amendments.