Today I am very happy to announce that we have a new member joining the OrangePolitics Posse (a.k.a. editorial board)! Travis Crayton has been a regular poster & commenter here on OP for almost 2 years. Travis first became interested in local issues when he served as treasurer and an active volunteer for Lee Storrow's 2011 campaign. Since then, he's become particularly interested in transit, economic development, town-university relations, and all things downtown. He graduates this Sunday from UNC with a degree in political science and public policy.

Join us for our monthly open editorial meeting. Standing agenda:

Join us for our monthly open editorial meeting. Standing agenda:

During the Thanksgiving weekend of 2010, Ruby and I met over coffee in downtown Carrboro to discuss a new direction for OrangePolitics. By the turn of the new year, Ruby had recruited me, Erin, Jason, and Molly to act as a group of editors who would help solicit new content, expand OP's presence on Twitter (@orangepolitics) and other social media, moderate comments when necessary, and prosecute the war on spambots and other robot visitors.

Watch the Tar Heels play Florida State with the OP gang.

Tentatively to be held at R & R Grill. 

The rain has been pouring down and I'm thinking even if the snow doesn't stick, temperatures below freezing tonight are going to make tomorrow morning treacherous at best.

How is everyone doing out there? Did you stock up on your white stuff? Feel free to share updates closings, conditions, etc.

OrangePolitics is a community resource established in 2003, which includes community blogs, election information, and live online candidate forums. The site has been using Drupal 5 since 2008 and is sorely in need of an update to Drupal 6 or 7. (Learn more about what is involved at drupal.org/documentation/upgrade/5/6.)

Drupal is a powerful, open source community content platform based on PHP and MySQL. It is growing dramatically in popularity and is currently used by thousands of enterprise web sites from Whitehouse.gov to PopSugar.com. Drupal developers are in high demand, so this is an opportunity to develop an extremely marketable skill.

As I wrote three months ago, OrangePolitics is overdue for a software upgrade. 5 years ago, you donated $1,000 to help move the site from WordPress to Drupal, and I think it was well worth the effort! Unfortunately, the software of the site has not seen a major update since that time. We need professional help again to upgrade the site from Drupal 5 to version 6 or 7, which will also allow us to move to cheaper web hosting. (I currently pay $35/month, but it could be a low as $10/month if we move the site.)

With the state of our local media ecosystem, OrangePolitics will only become more essential. And as Jeff wrote, we have added some great features such as live tweeting local government meetings and our own online candidate forums along with the always-informative blogging of your fellow community activists.

We're very grateful to the 15 people who already donated $500 last fall, and hope that a few more people can step up and get us the rest of the way to $800.

Polls opened 25 minutes ago. Which campaigns are out trying to cajole that last few supporters?

Are you volunteering today? Have you voted already? What's the scene at our poll sites?

Share your reports and thoughts about whatever you like on this open thread.