Jehlen wins overwhelmingly

[cos]

Although we don't have final numbers yet as far as I know, it sounds like enough results are in to know that Pat Jehlen won overwhelmingly over Leland Cheung. According to several sources, including https://dblstand.com/2016/09/08/jehlen-wins/, "Preliminary results show Jehlen with over 13,000 votes. Cheung received fewer than 4,000. Some precincts have yet to report."

Over in Cambridge, progressive challenger "no money" Mike Connolly has reportedly defeated 24-year incumbent state rep Tim Toomey.

Comments

[ron_newman]

I just returned from Pat's victory party at Aeronaut. The figures posted there were Pat 15115, Leland 3825.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Really glad that Jehlen will continue to represent us!

[keithn.livejournal.com]

For anyone who doesn't want to do the math - that's 79.8% to 20.2% for a 59.6 percentage point margin of victory (not counting abstentions/write ins).

[teko.livejournal.com]

Congrats to Pat! If I were her, I would've had "vote for me and you'll stop getting Leland Cheung junk mail every day" as a campaign plank.

[ron_newman]

Somerville precinct-by-precinct election results here.

Cambridge results are here, but not broken down by ward and precinct.

I don't see Medford results online yet.

[nonelvis]

I found Medford results here last night (scroll down, select "State_Senate" from dropdown): Jehlen got 3,740 (77%) of the votes; Cheung got 1,129 (23%).

[mem-winterhill.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Turnout continues to make me weep--but it was actually better than I expected. Hard to assess completely since other parties had no races in place, though.

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

I am very pleased to hear this news. I live in Medford (Hillside neighborhood, about a ten minute walk from Med Square) and if I understand correctly that the polls closed at 8 p.m., I would have been unable to vote because the 96 had some kind of line failure and I had to wait nearly an hour in Harvard Square for my bus home. I was too tired in any event to tramp over to my polling place. I used to vote at the Tufts gym but then, due to redistricting, I was assigned to this hell-hole in a VFW across the road from Mystic ave. I don't drive and it's always slightly harrowing crossing that highway after the bus trip home from work.

Am going to attempt to vote in the morning for the next election as I obviously can't rely on the bus getting me back home in time for this in the evening.

I got ENDLESS mail from Leland Cheung and somehow, the campaign got hold of my email as well. Extremely annoying.

[cos]

Contact Medford's elections office to find out what their plans are for early voting, which is supposed to be implemented starting with this year's general election. Cities and towns have a lot of latitude about how to do it, though - they could just allow early voting at city hall on a few normal weekdays, or they could have a couple of weekends of voting and set up polling places in other neighborhoods, or anything in between.

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I've even had targeted Cheung web ads. Who funded all that? Where is he getting the money?

[teko.livejournal.com]

His ridiculously aggressive ad campaign seems to have had the opposite effect of what he had in mind. Most people seem to have gotten very wary about how he was being funded after such a crazy ad spend.

[cos]

It may not have been his campaign directly. A pro-charter school group spent a lot of money on trying to elect him, but they operated independently of his campaign AFAIK. They may have funded most of what you got/saw.

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

I am always amazed at the number of blank ballots on the biggest race. 178 people in Somerville didn't pick between the two on just about the only race on the ballot.

[leafshimmer.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. I am fine just voting in the usual way on the actual day--as long as I go first thing, it will be fine. Anything else will involve yards of red tape, I'm sure.

[cos]

> Anything else will involve yards of red tape

No, it won't. Early voting isn't absentee voting. It's just normal voting, like you would at a normal polling place, but before election day. If you're registered, you should be able to just walk in to the polling place and give them your name and address and get a ballot as usual. They question is where the early polling places will be, and what days and hours they'll be open.

[irilyth]

http://www.arlingtonma.gov/town-governance/elections-voting has Arlington's: "Early voting will take place in the Arlington Town Hall Auditorium, Monday, October 24, 2016 until Noon Friday, November 4, 2016." and then a list of various hours.

I didn't see anything obvious on the web sites for any of Cambridge, Medford, or Somerville. :^(

[vonelftinhaus.livejournal.com]

While we are on the topic - when is Somerville's early voting? I could search/google but didn't know if anyone here knew offhand

[siderea]

the campaign got hold of my email as well

Oh, Lelund Cheung has (had?) been sending email to an email address I never shared with him, but which I subscribe to local email lists with, so I assume he accidentally-kinda-sorta stole it. I called him out publicly about it online, and he apologized and blamed an intern, and said he'd have my address removed. That was in May 2013, and as of Feb 2014 I was still getting emails from his campaign. For all I know, I still am, but my spam filters have seen to it.

Also, not terribly impressed with what I've seen of him at local development meetings.

As far as I am concerned, he's at best a spammer; at worst, I wonder if he's the sort of fellow who thinks rules are for suckers and nothing is going to come between him and getting what he wants. I got up early to vote for Jehlen even though I substantially disagree with her (I support charter schools). Cheung's campaign has done a damn fine job of getting out the Anybody But Lelund vote.

[ron_newman]

Remember that only 3 of Cambridge's 11 wards voted in the Jehlen-Cheung election.

[ron_newman]

Although I don't yet see anything on the city website, my polling place had a poster listing these times:

Monday 10/24: 8:30-4:30
Tuesday 10/25: 8:30-4:30
Wednesday 10/26: 8:30-4:30
Thursday 10/27: 8:30-7:30
Friday 10/28: 8:30-12:30

Saturday 10/29: 11-5
Sunday 10/30: 11-5

Monday 10/31: 8:30-7:30
Tuesday 11/1: 8:30-7:30
Wednesday 11/2: 8:30-7:30
Thursday 11/3: 8:30-7:30
Friday 11/4: 8:30-12:30

All early voting will take place in the Aldermen's Chambers at Somerville City Hall.

[rose_garden.livejournal.com]

I've been getting the election mail and I don't even live in Massachusetts anymore. It was addressed to my new address, not forwarded. I guess they got my new home address from the post office, but why send me snail mail spam if I'm not a resident / voter anymore?

[abilouise.livejournal.com]

I also want to add that many campaigns have volunteers who are happy to drive people to the polls on election day if they have difficulty getting there themselves.

[crankyoldguy.livejournal.com]

So, you assume he accidentally-kinda-sorta stole it? As in, hired a burglar to break in to an office and steal records (felony) ala Watergate? Or did he purchase a mailing list from someone you shared your email address with?

Come on folks, I may be an Old Guy, but this is the 21st Century and you do not have control over the information you release to the interwebs. You may not like how it is used, but please consider where and how you are providing information. While you blame the person who purchased he information you so freely gave, how about taking a look at the entity to which you provided the information. Did you read the fine print? Did you take a look at what they could do with that information you gave them? If you did, and you still have an issue, then how about blaming the entity which disclosed your information to a third party? Otherwise, you are accusing the third party of a felony. Are you comfortable doing that?

-Cranky

[siderea]

Answering your last question first: yes, I'm absolutely comfortable with accusing him of a felony, if I think he's commited one. Not sure however that I already have. But allow me to go there.

I'm sorry I didn't fully explain the situation. Allow me to do so now. When I said "stole my email address" I meant "took without authorization the secret email address I only use for two purposes: membership in a community email discussion list that agrees not to share it's lists with third parties, and subscription to official notifications from the cities of Cambridge and Boston."

Unlike you, I actually use unique email addresses for most different purposes, precisely to allow me to tell where somebody got "my email".

So I actually know just about exactly how he got my email address - that is the special, trackable email address I set up for this limited purpose. There's only a very few possible parties from whom he could have gotten it. He didn't buy it because nobody who had it was selling it.

The most benign possible interpretation of his behavior is that he or someone working for him harvested the email addresses of the participants in the neighborhood email list, in violation of their rules.

The least benign possibility is that he used city resources – official city email announcement lists – for his personal campaigning.

Is that a felony? I don't know.

If Lelund is a buddy of yours, tell him he's got a PR problem.

P.S. Re "So, you assume he accidentally-kinda-sorta stole it?" No, as I believe I've demonstrated, I have pretty strong evidence that either he or someone working for him took it without permission. "As in, hired a burglar to break in to an office and steal records (felony) ala Watergate? Or did he purchase a mailing list from someone you shared your email address with?" Neither. He has trusted access to resources he apparently has abused, either as a neighbor or as a City Councillor. He doesn't need to break in Watergate style because he has the keys.

[crankyoldguy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clarifying and providing the background info! Usually the baseless accusations tossed around on internet message boards just contribute to the poisonous climate of negativity. Thank you for stepping up and explaining rather than remaining in the shadows.

And, just so we are clear, I am not a "buddy" of Leland, I've never even met him, and neither am I your message boy.

-Cranky

[siderea]

neither am I your message boy

And I am not your punching bag. I have done nothing to deserve being treated the way you just treated me. I am an individual and only my behavior is to my account. I do not exist to be unloaded on as the assumed representative of some type of person you scorn.

[ron_newman]

Early voting information is now on the Somerville city website.

[geekchik.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm late to this party. I live in Medford too and my polling place is also in a very inconvenient location. I have to walk by a different polling place just around the corner from my house to get there! So I've been voting early at city hall, 10 days prior to the elections—it's been very easy.

[crankyoldguy.livejournal.com]

We could take this down a notch or two, but since you decided to air your grievances publicly, I will respond publicly.

I am not punching you, but merely responding to your demand (yes, demand: i.e. your behavior) that I deliver a message for you. I assume that you are an adult who is perfectly capable of dealing with any issue you have with Leland Cheung (I assume your repeated mis-spelling of his name is an intentional insult) directly with Leland Cheung, but for some odd reason you decided I knew him, and was defending him (neither of which is true), so you treated me as his surrogate (which I am not), and decided to take a condescending attitude. I suppose I could say that I am not your punching bag, but I am not so readily offended.

I am not unloading on you "as the assumed representative of some type of person you scorn". I am addressing you directly, and you are (justifiably, IMHO), invoking my scorn. You represent nothing, in my eyes, other than yourself, as presented in this thread. I do not know you, I do not presume to know you (as you have done to me, here). I only know you to the extent that you have divulged here in this thread. That is all I am responding to. Nothing more, nothing less.

If I may, a piece of advice as an old, cranky guy. If you have an issue with something, deal with it directly. You have a bone to pick with Leland Cheung? Go for it! Call him out (with reasonable info justifying your accusations), file lawsuits, call the media, scream to the high heavens. Go for it! Don't waste your time, and the electrons, pissing on my leg in an internet message board attacking me as a "representative" of that whom you despise. You presumed incorrectly. All I did was point out your incorrect assumption and push back against your arrogance toward me. That is all there is here. Please don't try to make it out as anything more than it is. This exchange is nothing, truly nothing. Your issues with Leland Cheung appear to be more substantial (although I have yet to explore the privacy policies of the cities of Somerville and Cambridge WRT shared email addresses). Do you want to waste your your time sparring with me here, or are you going to do something productive?

-Cranky

[ron_newman]

As a moderator here, I'd like to ask both of you to bring this argument to a close (at least here in public). Thanks.