Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Breaking "news" (9:30 PM)

Soooooo with four Precincts (out of 10) reporting we can conclude: T=P (Turnout is Pathetic)

Precinct 4: 7.9%
Precinct 5: 13%
Precinct 7: 13%
Precinct 10: 7.7%

Looks like Rhodes and Rivkin are our next two new School Committee members.

Scary race at the moment is for Amherst Redevelopment Authority with anti-development, tree hugger Rob Kusner leading former business owner, former Chamber of Commerce Director (and most importantly, Dad to Princess Stephanie)John Coull in a squeaker: 261 to 258.

UPDATE: 10:15 PM: Whew! According to the Springfield Republican John Coull pulled it out for ARA 909 to Rob Kusner's 832.

And naturally Gazettenet is reporting the School Committee race ass backwards showing Rivkin #1 with 1,454 votes and Rhodes #2 with 1,153 votes when those numbers should be about reversed:
Irvin E. Rhodes 1,564 , Steven G. Rivkin 1,240

7 comments:

ed said...

Coull has a daughter on the selectboard? That strikes me as a conflict of interest that someone ought to have at least disclosed...

Anonymous said...

Ed, have you lost your mind?

Anonymous said...

You have got this completely upside down. What is truly pathetic is high voter turnout. It merely represents parties and candidates that want to win at all costs even if that means having voters that are totally uninformed. Driving people to polls and get out the vote campaigns are meant to round up disinterested and uniformed voters for totally self-serving motives that only benefit candidate and party interests. Absentee ballots are meant to round up voters that actually have no stake in the election. When was the last time you heard about Democratic campaign workers driving Republican voters to the polls? In this election, roughly 3,000 (out of a town of only 30,000) motivated, informed voters made a decision. That’s fantastic! People that don’t have children, which there are many thousands of in Amherst, don’t care. This was one of the best elections ever. It was not a small group. Bravo!

Anonymous said...

To bolster Anonymous above's argument, look at the several elections we've had in which students have been mobilized to vote, including Charter Vote #1 in which the margin of victory for TM consisted of a group of frat boys who rolled out of bed on Election Morn and went to the polls thinking our current system of government was cute.

And where are those boys now?

Agreed: High turnout is not what it's cracked up to be.

Larry Kelley said...

No interest like self interest.

Of course high voter turnout did give us our current President...Hmmm

Just kidding, I actually think he's doing a good job now that he sounds like President Bush on Afghanistan and the SOB's who took down the Towers.

Ed said...

margin of victory for TM consisted of a group of frat boys who rolled out of bed on Election Morn and went to the polls thinking our current system of government was cute.
And where are those boys now?


More importantly, where are their frats? In a landfill somewhere...

The issue is that they were misinformed, that none of the good guys had the iniative to tell them how a mayor would benefit them, too.

Now as to tenure in a community and voting, how many of the senior citizens who voted in favor of the charter are now dead? And hence they shouldn't have been allowed to vote either because of their expected tenure in the community?

And I still say that when a close family member (and daughter is that) with a different last name (as married daughters tend to have) is also an elected official in town, you ought to publicly disclose that fact. This is Good Government 101.

Anonymous said...

I knew John Coull was Stephanie O'Keeffe's father. I think most people knew it.

So what's the obligation here? Stand on your rooftop and shout it? Wear a T-shirt for the entire campaign that declares it?

I think that this is a cheap shot against the integrity of both Mr. Coull and Ms. O'Keeffe.

Good Government 101, Ed, is for you to get your head in the game.