Around New England

Shiva Ayyadurai Gets More Than 20,000 Write-In Votes For U.S. Senate In Massachusetts

November 26, 2020

Shiva Ayyadurai wasn’t on the ballot this November, but he still got 21,134 write-in votes for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts.

U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-Malden) easily won re-election with 66.2 percent of the vote to Dover attorney and Republican Kevin O’Connor’s 33.0 percent. The remaining 0.8 percent of the vote? Of it, 0.6 percent went to Ayyadurai, and the other 0.2 percent went to various write-ins, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s web site.

Ayyadurai sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, but received 39.4 percent of the vote to O’Connor’s 59.7 percent, state records show.

Ayyadurai also ran for U.S. Senate in 2018 as an independent and finished in third with 3.4 percent of the vote.

Ayyadurai married actress Fran Drescher in 2014, but the two separated in 2016, according to The Jerusalem Post.