Delegates for Prisioner #11593-051

Another primary night has passed and very little that was unexpected happened.

In the Presidential primaries, Mr. Romney won all three states (IN, NC, and WV) with better than 60% of the vote in all. He will receive 27, 36, and 21 delegates respectively, bringing his hard total up to 881 while his projected total (including unsettled caucuses and unpledged delegates) sits at 939 or 82% of the needed total.

A funny side note on the Democratic side. Mr. Obama was up against a fellow named Keith Russell Judd in the West Virginia primary. Mr. Obama won the contest 59-41, however, Mr. Judd is currently in prison in Texas and the West Virginia Democratic party is at a bit of a loss whether to void the delegates that Mr. Judd should have won or not.

Outside of President, there were three races of note. The first was the primary defeat of Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) to state treasurer Richard Mourdock. There was much hang-wringing and lamenting by the Washington insiders but this was not an unexpected outcome.

The second result of note was the passage of a constitutional amendment in North Carolina to outlaw gay marriage and civil unions. The funny thing about this (amidst the lamenting and moaning about this from the left) is that this actually changes nothing in North Carolina. North Carolina had already outlawed gay marriage and civil unions in the normal legal process. However, there was concern that this law could be struck down through the judiciary and so the constitutional amendment was passed, just has it has in 30 other states. The most likely cause of all the extra attention is the embarrassment of having this amendment pass by a large margin (61-39) in the same state where the Democratic National Convention will be held in September.

The third result of note is the finalizing of the contestants in the Wisconsin governor recall election. Scott Walker and his running mate, Rebecca Kleefisch will face off against Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett and Mahlon Mitchell on June 5. This is actually a rematch as Mr. Walker defeated Mr. Barrett in 2010 for the governorship in the regular election. One other little note about this race is that despite a hot contest between five candidates on one side and an essentially unchallenged incumbent on the other, there were only about 24,000 more votes cast in the Democratic primary than in the Republican (out of about 1.3 million cast). That can't sit well with Mr. Barrett in terms of voter enthusiasm and generating enough support to oust Mr. Walker in four weeks.