Sean Garballey, 23, a grad student at Suffolk, soundly defeated two opponents yesterday to gain a seat in the commonwealth's House of Representatives. Garballey will represent Arlington and part of Medford. Garballey is a recent graduate of UMass Lowell and has served on the Arlington School Committee. On his campaign website he exclaims, "Public Service is my life!" He credits a volunteer tour guide position at the State House when he was 16 with......

Boston City Council: The four winners in the at-large race were incumbents Michael Flaherty, Stephen Murphy, Sam Yoon, and new arrival John Connolly. Incumbent Felix Arroyo didn't make the cut. Now Murphy and Connolly will need to figure out how to live with each other after Connolly's anonymous mailers, which accused Murphy of always looking for other jobs. Michael Pahre at Brighton Centered reports that Mark Ciommo defeated Greg Glennon for the District 9 slot......

If you walk through Cambridge, you would think that everyone is running for office based on the number of signs on residential streets. Finally, the day has arrived to vote for the city council and the school committee. There are nine open seats on the council, eight incumbents are running again, and several newbies want their jobs. The Cambridge Chronicle has a well-done list of profiles for each candidate. The big story of the election......

Municipal elections in Cambridge are not known for being the most easy to understand voting system. To begin with, rather than the traditional winner-takes-all system that dominates U.S. representative democracy, Cambridge is one of the few cities in the country that uses a system of Proportional Representation (PR) where voters rank the candidates in the order they would like to see them elected to the City Council or School Committee. The votes are then counted......

Twenty lucky middle school graduates are taking a raincheck on Summer and enrolling in Beacon Academy, a new breed of private schools. Starting in July, students will attend 14 months of classes to prepare them for elite high schools. The kids will have classes Monday through Saturday, 9 to 5:30, studying art, sailing, squash, and chatting with university presidents over long lunches. The project was approved yesterday by the Boston School Committee, and is......