Somerville unofficial special Senate election results now online

[ron_newman]

http://www.somervillema.gov/sites/default/files/election%20totals.pdf

No great surprises to be found here.
Markey - 11,569 (82.7%)
Gomez - 2,281 (16.3%)

Comments

[pklemica]

Actually, given that the Markey campaign called me at 7:30 this evening - I have no idea how they got my cell phone number, but they asked for me by name - warning that it was going to be a close election and encouraging me to get out the vote, this spread is a great surprise to me.

(thank you for posting the results!)

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it; I've been getting emails for weeks about how GOMEZ IS TOTALLY GOING TO WIN UNLESS YOU GIVE US A DOLLAR. It took me a while to realize they were using Gomez's internal polling to get a "close race"; when even your internal polls put you seven points behind, it's time to quit.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I think Elizabeth Warren's campaign gave all her collected info to Markey directly (EW was the only politician I ever shared such info with and Markey's campaign started emailing me wayyyyy ealy in the primaries).

I'm sure he collected info from a number of other sources as well, but in general I think he took an overly aggressive marketing approach that turned me off for quite some time.

[squirrelitude]

And I see the Time Cube Twelve Visions Party got 0.5% of the vote. I wonder how many of those 67 people had researched the candidate beforehand, and how many just voted third-party out of principle?

5 blank ballots. As I understand it, people sometimes cast a blank ballot as a sign of protest -- "I don't like any of the choices, but I still showed up to vote."

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

I think sometimes if the ballot is illegible in the write-in line they will say it's blank.

I submitted a protest vote in the primaries basically to say I'm unhappy with my choices. I was also relatively unhappy with my choices for this race, but not stupid enough to waste my vote ;)

[gruene.livejournal.com]

That may be if there are other things on the ballot you didn't blank, but if the ballot is entirely blank, there's no way it could be accidental. The machine rejects it, assuming you used the wrong pen or otherwise mismarked it. Those five people had to tell the poll workers, "No, I wanted to vote a blank ballot, that wasn't a mistake!"

[gruene.livejournal.com]

I misunderstood your comment. It's true that "illegitimate" write-ins are supposed to be recorded as blank. So if you vote for, say, "Lizard People", it's supposed to be recorded as a blank vote. In practice, I doubt there would be any changes from the machine tape total of this sort. They way the form that Somerville uses works is that you start with the machine totals then add the hold count totals, so it's unlikely anyone would go back and say "No, one of those write-ins was actually a blank". They just wouldn't record it as a legitimate write-in.

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

So, who's running for the seat now vacated by Markey?

[ron_newman]

A LOT of people including Medford-Somerville state rep Carl Sciortino.

[cnoocy]

Gotta love cascading elections.

[ron_newman]

Remember the last time this happened? State Senator Charlie Shannon died, and we elected Representative Pat Jehlen to replace him. Then we elected Alderman-at-large Denise Provost to replace Pat. Denise stayed in both jobs for a year or so, but then decided to resign from the Board of Aldermen, so we elected Jack Connolly to replace her. All in out-of-band special elections.