Elections

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro PTA Council is sponsoring a Board of County Commissioner Forum on Education to help inform voters about the candidates running for the Orange County Board of County Commissioners. The education forum will be held on Monday, April 17, at 7 PM, at Carrboro Town Hall. The forum will be aired live on the public access channel (Time Warner channel 18) and will also be rebroadcast later. It will be moderated by Frances Henderson, Executive Director of the Dispute Settlement Center. This event is free and open to the public.

The May primaries are of great importance to our school community because the County Commissioners decide how much money is allocated to the two school systems existing in the county and determine other educational issues as well. The PTA Council has also compiled a list of questions and answers from the BOCC candidates. This survey can be accessed through the Council's website, www.ptacouncil.com. For more information about the forum and for procedures for submitting online questions for the forum, please go to the Council's website.

I have completed what I think is a comprehensive list of candidates for the primary, which is 3 weeks from last Tuesday, but early voting starts TODAY!

This election information required quite a bit of research as the County Board of Elections doesn't list judicial or congressional races, or candidates that file in other counties for state legislative races. All the state BOE offers is one huge document listing all legislative, jusdicial, and congressional candidates for the entire state. Oy. Anyway, I have also included candidate web sites if I could find them. Please visit http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2006 and let me know if I have missed anything.

Here are the early voting locations:

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce is partnering with EmPOWERment, Inc., the Village Project, and WCHL 1360AM to host an Orange County Commissioner candidates forum on Tuesday, April 11 from 7:30pm-9pm at Southern Human Services Center in Chapel Hill. The forum will be broadcast live on WCHL 1360AM. The forum partners hope that you can attend or listen to the live broadcast on WCHL.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce also asked candidates to complete a questionnaire and interview. The Chamber elections brochure complete with questionnaire answers and chamber commentary on candidates is available online at http://www.carolinachamber.org/elections/