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« AG says again he was against Station Nightclub plea deal | Main Thursday, September 21, 2006Wilkerson delcares victory in write-in ballot count
By Donovan Slack and Maria Cramer, Globe Staff Incumbent Dianne Wilkerson declared victory early this evening with an apparent 702-vote victory after election officials counted write-in votes from eight precincts that had been overlooked in Tuesday's primary. However, Sonia Chang-Diaz, the second place challenger, had not conceded the election as of 6:30 p.m. The hand count of 2,709 ballots took about four hours and gave Wilkerson a total of 6,412 votes to Chang-Diaz's 5,710 votes. Results reported by the Globe can be viewed here. When officials began tallying the ballots at 2:30 p.m., Wilkerson clung to a 141-vote lead over Chang-Diaz. Workers on the eighth floor of City Hall counted ballots in three, two-member teams. One person examined the ballots while another tallied the votes. Onlookers watched in rows of chairs that had been set up behind a velvet rope. The official tally will determine the winner in Tuesday’s contentious and hard-fought Second Suffolk District primary between Wilkerson, a seven-term incumbent, and Chang-Diaz, a school teacher. Computerized ballot-counting machines tallied the number of ballots cast in eight Dorchester and Roxbury precincts Tuesday, but not votes for senate candidates who waged write-in campaigns in the race. A judge yesterday ordered the ballot boxes from those precincts unsealed so that the write-in votes could be counted today.
Sonia Chang- Diaz (left, writing) and Sen. Diane Wilkerson (background yellow far right) were present today as Boston Elections Department employees counted and recorded write-in ballots in Tuesday's primary election at City Hall. Posted by the Boston Globe City & Region Desk at 06:47 PM
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