Carrboro was notified yesterday that their Town Hall would not be used as a one-stop early voting site in May. Apparently, the Orange County Board of Elections has decided to only have two one-stop locations for this year's primary: Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, and the Board's own office in Hillsborough. The e-mail below indicates that there will still be an early voting site in Carrboro for the Novemeber general election, but doesn't offer any explanation for the primary change.

Candidate filing for 2010 elections starts today at noon. Folks only have two and a half weeks (until February 26th) to declare their intent to run in the May primary (and presumably the November general election).  Information will be posted at the Orange County Board of Elections.

The offices that will be on the ballot this year are: County Commissioner (districts 1 & 2 and at-large), Clerk of Court, Register of Deeds, Sheriff, Orange County Board of Education, State Senate, State House, Soil Conservation District Supervisor (non-partisan, no primary).

Help me keep an eye on the BOE page, and let everyone know if anything interesting happens!

FYI.

2010 Candidate Filing Period

The 2010 candidate filing period begins at noon on Monday, February 8 and ends at noon on Friday, February 26 at the Orange County Board of Elections located at 208 South Cameron Street in Hillsborough.

All Notices of Candidacy, together with the proper filing fee, must be in the possession of the Orange County Board of Elections by noon on Friday, February 26.  Filing will be open for the following offices: State Senate, State House of Representatives, County Commissioner, Sheriff, Register of Deeds, Clerk of Court and Orange County Board of Education.  Notices arriving after that time cannot be accepted. Filing fees exceeding $50.00 must be paid with individual check or money order, payable to the "Orange County Board of Elections". Business or corporate checks are not acceptable.

Tonight at 9pm President Obama will give his first State of the Union address where I imagine he'll both look back at what has happened in the past year, as well as where we are heading in the years to come.  I'll be listening on NPR for the first part since I'll be driving home from Raleigh to Chapel Hill at 9 (I checked with the WUNC Interim Program Director and they will be broadcasting it).  Since many local elections are the country will be affected the general mood towards Democrats, and President Obama is the captain of that ship, I think it is a good time to look at what he has accomplished, and what he still needs to do.

Kirk Ross had a good preview of the coming electoral season in The Carrboro Citizen last week.  He highlighted the battle for Ellie Kinnaird's N.C. Senate seat as she will really be retiring this year (we think.)  I'm amused that after his bold declaration that he'd be back after losing to Kinnaird in the 2008 primary, Moses Carey is now quietly enjoying his N.C. state goverment appointment instead of gearing up for a campaign.

Kirk also introduced the emerging races for County Comissioner...

There has been a lot going on and I can scarcely find a moment to blog about it. Maybe in 6 years when my son starts school and I don't have to work to pay for daycare so I can work so I can...  where was I? Oh yeah, so last night three important things happened in local government - we took 2 steps forward and one step back for social justice.

1. The Orange County Commissioners rejected both door number one (a new, expanded landfill) and door number two (a waste transfer station).  Instead they will be shipping our trash to Durham, an idea which I never years in literally years of debate about this issue.  In any case, this seems to be a huge victory for the historically African-American Rogers Road neighborhood, which has shouldered Orange County's landfill for nearly four decades and which is ready to move on the the next phase of their lives, that is: not being neighbors to any major waste handling facilities. 

The maps in this post show the precinct-level results of the Carrboro mayoral and alderman elections.

I was a little worried that the polling in Chapel Hill would screw up the annual Pundit of the Year contest, but since PPP Polls had Penny in 6th and she actually came in 1st, I think we can safely say that pundits had to rely on their own intuition. No-one (not even Penny) predicted Penny would come first in Chapel Hill so no contestants won on the order.

The following people did predict the winners correctly in all of the races though, and most of them put their entries in before Tom Jensen announced the PPP figures anyway: Jason Baker, Penny Rich, Mark Chilton, Erin Crouse, and Greg Bell!  Each of them will get a gift certificate for OP's Zazzle print-on-demand store.

In averaged results, the contestants as a whole picked the winners in every race except for School Board.  However, we got the order wrong on the Chapel Hill Town Council and Carrboro Board of Aldermen due to the success of challengers Penny Rich and Sammy Slade.  Read on for aggregated predictions...