Elections

A few things I want to note but don't have time to write a full blog post about...

Blogger Xan Gregg created some interesting charts showing the results in Chapel Hill.

Chuck Morton wrote a really thoughtful essay on his web site about his experience running for mayor of Carrboro. Not only do I hope he stays involved with Carrboro politics, I hope he starts a blog so we can continue to enjoy his thoughts and opinions.

I noticed that the returns came in incredibly quickly from the Board of Elections on Tuesday night. While there were some glitches with machines over-counting, they were are all resolved quite easily. The Carrboro Commons (student publication) has this story about the technology and people behind the election returns.

I find it interesting how local candidates have used the internet as a primary source for campaign information. I have lived in several suburbs of North Carolina cities but I have never seen local political candidates use websites for any sort of campaigning.

Have these sites made a different impact on local voters or have voters even seen the sites at all?

With the exception of two one incumbents (Jim Ward and Joal Broun) all of the candidates in Chapel Hill and Carrboro races as well as the school board race had campaign web sites. Interestingly, no Hillsborough candidates were online except the Mayor whose web site was apparently leftover from his first campaign 2 years ago. All of these links are available at http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2007.

I asked Ruby who pointed out that this is not the first year that sites have been used and past years can be seen at http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2006 and http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2005.