Congratulations to Peter Smulowitz, who appears to have defeated Lida Harkins in the Democratic primary for Scott Brown’s seat (IT’S THE PEOPLE’S SEAT!!). Smulowitz will face Richard Ross in the May 11 general election.
Things remain unsettled in the Middlesex, Suffolk & Essex race – apparently Tim Flaherty has refused to concede to Sal DiDomenico (who claimed victory earlier with a margin of about 125 votes), is alleging “voting irregularities” in Everett, and is asking for a recount.
Stay tuned…
Please share widely!
Any idea what total turnout was? These links give results for some individual cities and towns, but I don’t think any of them give an estimate for the districtwide total.
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p>Still, given the numbers they report for parts of the district, it does look like turnout was high enough that a ~125 vote margin is pretty close and a recount is a reasonable thing to want.
anywhere. Very frustrating. Nor have I seen turnout estimates, though someone said Somerville was about 13%.
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p>I don’t think any of these totals yet include absentee and provisionals, so given the size of the lead, I agree that Flaherty seems to be taking a reasonable course. After all, since there’s not really a general election, there’s no worry about losing time on the campaign trail.
Though it may be different elsewhere, I know that in Cambridge the absentee ballots are counted during the day at the polls, so only the handful of provisional ballots would potentially still be uncounted.
But otherwise you’re correct. I can’t imagine there will be many overseas voters who bothered to weigh in on this, but I could be wrong.
Of course, recount or no, it seems like once again we’re going to get a winner who received far less than a majority – and likely less than 1/3 of the total vote. Whoever it is has, I think, a moral obligation to take the lead in finally getting preference voting for our state elections.
there were 6 candidates!
other states have instant runoff, never mind countries.
I was volunteering for Smulowitz most of the day. It’s certainly one of those elections where the difference between the two campaigns was one of them had a better field team. Wicked close!!! (I have Smulowitz’s victory speech on tape… I’m feeling kind of lazy tired at this point, so we’ll see if I post it tonight lol.)
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p>My thoughts on the other race is… why don’t we have instant runoff yet? Of course, instant runoff was a topic of discussion on today’s LeftAhead podcast with Sec. of State candidate Jim Henderson (sorry for the plug LOL).
I’m still not finding detailed results. Here is what they have.
Now we all a dog in this fight. How sweet it would be to take back Scott Brown’s seat.