508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s panel is Kevin Ksen, Brendan Melican, and Tracy Novick.
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We talk about the City Council election. We talk about the School Committee election. We talk about a new Worcester video site Mike’s playing with (and you should, too). We talk about a $10 million lawsuit against Worcester for an incident during the taping of the Fox TV show COPS in 2006.
Okay, so those numbers that we didn’t have in front of us (http://www.ci.worcester.ma.us/election-results/current.pdf) show that Joe O’Brien had 10,214 votes for mayor and 12,206 for Council (so close to 2000 people wanted him on the Council but didn’t vote for him for mayor, assuming those were the same people). Joe’s Council votes make him the top vote-getter on the ballot, beating Brian O’Connell’s 11,192 for School Committee.
On blank ballots: 715 didn’t vote in the mayoral race, 1515 didn’t vote for School Committee, and 237 didn’t for At Large Council.
Not to keep harping on it, but there were a significant amount of blank ballots cast for certain races. In the District 5 councilor race, which was uncontested, 2601 people either wrote in or left that portion of the ballot blank — 46% of the voters in that district!
In the tight District 1 Councilor race, 505 ballots were left blank. The difference between Smith and Casello was only 310 votes. If Casello had won over most of the people who chose instead to cast a blank ballot, he would be the new District 1 Councilor.
In the Distict 2 (Palmieri vs. Raffa as a write in), 1098 ballots were left blank. Palmieri only got 1,529 votes. So, apathy or boredom or disgust (take your pick) came in second in the District 2 race.