The Globe reports on state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson's desire to avoid another embarrassment like two years ago, when she, oops, forgot to file her nomination petitions on time. The paper writes:

This year, Wilkerson qualified for the primary ballot with a whopping 3,000 signatures, 10 times the amount she needed.

Not quite. As Linda Rodriguez at the South End News reports, Wilkerson actually only qualified with 428 signatures, just one more than her opponent, Sonia Chang-Diaz. This doesn't mean the remainder of her 3,000 signatures were bad, necessarily, just that elections officials stopped looking after a certain point.

What one could call the opening round in the race between State Senator Dianne Wilkerson (D- 2nd Suffolk) and her Democratic challenger, Sonia Chang-Diaz, takes place tonight.

Boston Democratic Ward Committees are hosting a forum featuring the two candidates. After the forum, Boston's Ward 5 Democratic Committee is taking an endorsement vote. It might be only June, but this race has begun.

Here's an email I received regarding the event from the Boston Ward 5 Democratic Committee Chairman (NOTE: I am a member of the Boston Ward 5 Democratic Committtee):

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Left Ahead posts an hour-long interview with Chang-Diaz, making her second run for the 2nd Suffolk Senate seat now held by Dianne Wilkerson.

Announces bid on Blue Mass Group. She'll be running, again, against 2nd Suffolk incumbent Dianne Wilkerson, who perhaps will pay a bit more attention to filing deadlines this time around.

Sonia Chang-Diaz offers concession after recount in the Democratic 2nd Suffolk state senate primary.

Mass. Marrier cautions:

... Unless an angel of wisdom or self-control visits her, Wilkerson is likely to make supporting her impossible. She barely managed to do that this time.

Cos, a Chang-Diaz supporter, reports from the recount at City Hall (via a Treo):

... It's 2:30pm and we've only counted 20-something of the 73 precincts, so this is almost certainly going to continue into the evening. ...

Mass. Marrier continues to come to terms with the expected re-election of progressive yet fatally flawed Dianne Wilkerson in the 2nd Suffolk:

... Wilkerson is not the only egomaniac who expects and often gets voters to overlook her inability to control her appetites and her disregard for the rules the rest of us play by, so long as she can show the a record of good votes. Yet, her prolonged and painful disregard for law, decency and the public should disqualify her from consideration for office. ...

The city will recount most of the votes, but not in the two wards where she fell short of the required 50 signatures. Chang-Diaz will sue to get those wards counted.

Given the clearly odd results in that race (remember: city election workers failed to file results in eight precincts) why didn't the secretary of state and the mayor simply declare a full recount?

... Hanging on to the literal interpretation of the recount rules spits on the voters. ...

At the least, any poll worker who chose not to count ballots or locked away the write-in class ones to avoid democracy needs to be canned. They don't get paid much, but they do have as a rule a strong insider identity in this process. I'm sure we can find enough of us who are willing to do the job, the whole job. ...

Cos reports from the front line of the Chang-Diaz petition drive yesterday.

On Blue Mass. Group, Will discusses why he's working hard to help get the required signatures (by 5 today) to force a complete recount in the Dianne Wilkerson/Sonia Chang-Diaz primary:

... Personally, I've mentally made the assumption that Sonia is not going to win, and I'm still passionate about this recount happening. What I saw of the vote-counting gives me a complete lack of confidence in Boston's, and by extension, Massachusetts' ability to count votes correctly. This means that all those people who walk into the polls on Election Day may be accomplishing precisely nothing, because no one cares about whether or not the vote count is "right". That's a thought that gets me very upset. ...

Blue Mass. Group has the details on the latest in the ongoing 2nd Suffolk state-Senate fiasco.

Dan Kennedy, meanwhile, uses pesky facts to show that Dianne Wilkerson either lies or just has a bad memory when it comes to her going negative on opponents in the past.