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

[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.