Election Day Fun

"I always believed in futures. I hope for a better November...Say hello to good times."
-Jimmy Eat World

Well, the inevitable occurred. Deval Patrick secured his seat in the state house, easily defeating Kerry Healey and two no-names. In my home state of New York, the democrats reigned supreme as Hillary Clinton easily won re-election and Eliot Spitzer won the gubernatorial race.

Now in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, all Patrick had to do was show up. Healey handed Patrick the election with her awful smear campaign that had one bad advertisement after another. Seriously, the democrats could have put a dead John Kennedy on the ballot and Healey would have swept the corpse into election.

What would have been really funny would be if all the Patrick supporters got complacent after seeing that the polls favored the democratic candidate and didn't vote. Then Healey would have snuck into the office with enough votes. That could have mirrored an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Bart had all the pre-election support in his run for class president, but none of his supporters remembered to vote, and his nemesis Martin Prince won the election, 2-0.

But I digress.

Since I frequent Boston.com and NYTimes.com, I thought I'd post some of my favorite new media features of Election Day coverage:

Check out the sea of blue in Boston.com's map of each town's voting results. I was a little disappointed that the towns of Harvard and Falmouth both voted in favor of Patrick. A friend of mine has lived in each of those towns and he swore on his life that both towns would vote democratic. Healey wins in those areas would have given me the giggles for days.

In the Boston.com photo gallery, be sure to see picture five. I think Patrick's smile is a little forced. He doesn't really want to be seen with this guy right now. Also in the photos is state senator Dianne Wilkerson, who won re-election. She's not a big supporter of Northeastern and the university's policy on expanding. Something to consider.

Also, don't miss the pre-Election Day coverage that Boston. com had. In a flash page, the site provides analysis of the races in the house and senate as the Democrats try to seize control for the first time this decade.

NYTimes.com has a page dedicated to national races where you can click on a map of the U.S. and pick a race in any state whether it be House, Senate or Gubernatorial. There's also a slide show showing the candidates who won and lost last night.

In a side note, Joseph Lieberman won re-election in the senate race in Connecticut. Lieberman was ousted from the Democratic seat in the primary by Ned Lamont, losing the support of his fellow donkeys. Kudos to Lieberman for sticking to his beliefs and his agenda, running as an independent and then showing everyone that his way is still the most popular way.

"We're wide awake and we're thinking. My darling! Believe your votes can mean something!"
-Jimmy Eat World