Patrick vs Healey – it's on

We knew Deval Patrick was in the race last year – he threw his hat in early. If it weren't for that pesky Romney character we would have known Kerry Healey was in the race earlier. After primary voting yesterday it finally became clear who the front-runners in the race for Governor would be. Deval Patrick picked up 50% of the democratic primary vote to beat out his challengers Chris Gabrieli and Tom Reilly. There are, of course, other choices for Massachusetts voters to make in determining who will lead the Commonwealth – Christy Mihos is running as an independent and Grace Ross is running as the candidate in the Green-Rainbow party. No doubt that the buzz will continue to look like what it did today – what Deval says about Kerry, and what Kerry says about Deval. It would be nice if Mr. Mihos or Ms. Ross were able stir something up that would bring focus outside of the two-party system. Thankfully it's only seven weeks of television, radio, and print commercials to endure.

Ever since great Florida debacle of the 2000 election it has been getting harder and harder for a free and fair election to happen anywhere. Eight of the 73 precincts of the Second State Senatorial District (uh, yeah, where Dianne Wilkerson was running a "sticker" or write-in campaign) had some election irregularities. Wilkerson holds the seat currently and failed to get the required signatures to get on the primary ballot because, as she claims, was too busy doing work for the state to collect them. As it stands today she leads by 141 votes, just over one and a quarter percent margin. Legal actions are stirring and we'll likely see a recount of some or all of the ballots tomorrow. Lucky it was just a primary in a non-presidential election year or more people may have actually shown up to the polls, making the recount last a little longer.