8:46PM – Perhaps I shuld actually look at the election results streaming down on the big projector and offer comment? Lots of activity going down right now.

Obama is beating Clinton 74-24 in Durham, which is no big surprise.

BOCC…results still holding, with Bowser and Howerton looking to grab the 4th and 5th slots after the incumbents Heron, Reckhow, and Page.

Hagan over Neal, 65-21 in Durham. A bit surprised. Signs don’t really matter, I suppose. Neal signs seemed to outnumber Hagan signs 100-1.

Now the roo m is, well, more packed then it was the last time I commented on the attendance. My camera is on its own on the other side of the auditorium. I ought to get it.

N.C. Republican Governor Race….McCrory leading Fred Smith. I’m glad, because if Perdue (presumably will beat Moore) were to lose, Fred Smith would be downright scary.

Tracey Cline looks to be winning the D.A. race. Liestoppers etc. still have something to write about for another couple of years.

Hampton Dellinger has 69% of Durham vote, but he’s from Durham. I’m looking at the Durham-only results. In the state….Dalton 42-36….If he gets 40% (Dalton), there will be no run-off….

8:26AM I don’t know quite how one is supposed to “live blog” an event. I came to the Durham County Courthouse as an…

8:33PM …as an observer, mostly. Ginny and MyNC are doing live-streaming. I’ve been chiming in with such pearls of wisdom like “media hasn’t call the race for Hagan yet” as if that matters, since she will beat Neal by 30 points before the night is out. I leave the blogging to people who are well-informed like Barry and Ginny.

I learned this evening that my hair resembles something from the San Antonio music scene.

8:35PM I am sitting right next to two county commissioner candidates and our mayor Bill Bell. Are bloggers supposed to eavesdrop? That’s not nice. I suppose if I am trying to tell a story, I should be talking to people, but talking isn’t quite my thing. Wow, the room is packed now, relative to what it looked like a half hour ago.

8:38PM I am very surprised to see the results coming in for the Durham BOCC. Everyone (except for the Committee) endorsed Don Moffitt. I’m not important enough to fear repercussions from voicing the thought that skin color matters when you’re running for office in Durham. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing. It is what it is. African-American voters came out in droves for a historic vote for Barack Obama. They typically do vote for African-American candidates for local office, and they did so in droves in this election. Bad for Don Moffitt. Good for Joe Bowser

Oh, no. Ginny, you didn’t just mention me on a live webcast? I heard my name. Toastie dot S T. I’m such a…ok, no time for a jump-the-shark moment. You’re actually writing about something relevant to other people for a change.

I need a drink. Diet 7-Up. The uncola. Those 80s commericals said it contained no caffeine. “Never had it, never will”. Still true. Some promises are upheld! Good for you, 7-Up!

I go off on a lot of tangents….

I guess, when live-blogging, one should post now and then…

I need all the wake-up calls I can get in the morning. So thank you to Victoria Peterson’s volunteer staff for calling me at 7:45 this morning to let me know that there’s a rally for her candidacy this weekend. I had no idea she was running for something again. But if there’s an election for something, she’s got to be in it. You’ve got to admire her perseverance. Ms. Peterson is angling to become a County Commissioner this time around.

I know she’s always talking about the need to get work for Durham men. She got me to get up and come to work this morning. Please don’t ever call me at 7:45 in the morning again, but it was ok this one time…

• David Harris lost his bid for a city council seat to Farad Ali because Harris once had the gall to support a candidate who was not the choice of Durham Committee icon Lavonia Allison. As a local “insider” made a point of emphasizing to me some months back, Harris’s preferred candidate was white, while Lavonia’s was black. So it didn’t matter that Harris spent three decades of his life fighting for better, safer neighborhoods for his predominantly African-American neighbors. He supported someone on their merits rather than skin color alone. So Allison and The Committee (on the Affairs of Black People) ignored Harris in making their endorsements. You can vote for three candidates in the city council election; The Committee only endorsed one (Ali). Farad Ali is, by all accounts, a fine candidate. But so was Harris, and had The Committee extended its endorsements to him, he’d have placed third.
• Bill Bell beat Thomas Stith fairly soundly. How much of this can be attributed to the confidence the people of Durham have in Bell and how much can be attributed to how little confidence people had in Stith? I didn’t see too much enthusiasm eminating from Bell supporters. Most of the GOTV effort was focused on letting people know what a disaster Stith would be for Durham.
• Rougemont and Bethesda are anti-museum. This is just a fact. So if you’re thinking of moving to Durham County, and you love museums, don’t move to Rougemont or Bethesda, because they hate museums. Truly. It’s sad.

Gee, hope I didn’t just burn any bridges. If so, they were probably bridges back to the twentieth century anyway. If, in fact, they’re actually solid, modern bridges, then…oh, well. Back to cat photos and dead celebrities tomorrow…

Let’s register students! Let’s give them pizza and they’ll register to vote! Let’s rock the youth vote!

NO! Stop it! Because you’re f****** with my precinct numbers. Everyone thinks that no one in my precinct votes. It’s such an apathetic precinct. It’s one of the worst in the city. No, not really. It looks like that, because you had to be a super-cool-activist and register all the Dukies, who don’t and never will give a rat’s ass about their local elections, not to mention that if you were registering them for the presidential race, their vote probably would’ve carried more weight in their home state.

There are roughly 2300 “registered voters” assigned to my precinct. There are 1860 registered as either Democrats or unaffiliated. 650 of this latter group – 35% – registered as residents of Duke campus and have 0% voting participation.

So when I see that my precinct had an abysmal 15% turnout (compared to 25% for the city), it really pissed me off that this number could easily be 25% if these non-voting, non-Durham-resident Duke students were simply not on the voter rolls in the first place.

Yes, but shouldn’t you be pissed off about the other 75% who didn’t vote?

Sure, but I’d really like to know how many Durham residents really aren’t voting, as opposed to the percentage on the voter rolls who aren’t voting. I’m pretty sure that when you register to vote in other county in North Carolina, your Durham registration is voided. But due to the transient nature of a large chunk of Durham residents (Duke and UNC students, post-docs, etc.), there are likely thousands of registered voters who have long since left the Tar Heel state, causing the problem of low-voter turnout to be artificially inflated.

Yes, but still, shouldn’t you worry more about the people who DO live in your precinct and your city who aren’t voting?

Yes, but I like to obsess over things that no one else obsesses over, like how you won’t find the word “popcorn” on a box of Orville Redenbacher snacks. (I’ll explain later).

And you’re not seriously suggesting that student voter registration drives are a bad idea, are you?

Actually, I am. If you really wanted to influence an election, you’d figure how to talk to the people who live in my neighborhood, whom I don’t know how to talk to, and get THEM, the people who have lived her for 20, 30, 50 years, to come out and vote.

For many years, I was one of those Durham residents who drove past the array of election signs every fall and wondered what it all meant. Scratch that. I think I just wondered how effective it was, just sticking your name on sign, in garnering votes at the polls. (This goes for any municipality, I suppose). Seldom is a slogan given. Races are officially non-partisan, so party affiliations are rarely mentioned. When photos are added, you learn a candidate’s race and general age, and whether they’re photogenic or…not. I had never heard of these supposedly very influential PACs–Friends of Durham, People’s Alliance, Durham CAN, The Committee. I’d rely on The Independent to tell me whom to vote for.

2007 has been different, though. Nine months ago, I was encouraged to go to a city council meeting. And then I was drafted into a Democratic Party precinct officer position. You might be reading this and thinking, “Wow, that’s great!” That’s not what I think, though, to be quite truthful. I never aspired to be involved in local politics. And when I accepted the nudge into the arena, it was with the understanding that I’d have some help navigating it. As it happened, I felt like I was thrown into the cage and told, “Aw, you’ll figure it out!”

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey, it’s not a bad thing to learn how to swim by being thrown into the deep end of the pool!” Maybe so; maybe for you, that’s fine. It’s not fine with me. Because the last thing I needed today was to get a lecture from a guy who’s lived in Walltown for 50 years about how no one in the neighborhood cares to get involved. I’ve never claimed to anyone that I’ve got the chops to be an activist.

This being said, I have thoughts on how the mayoral election and city council election went, along with our my precinct voted. I’ll table these for now, because it’s late, and there are plenty of people out there who know what they’re talking about. I mean, specifically, Kevin, Barry, and Michael. I’m not even going to say whom I voted for today, because I know I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

Last night, at Duke’s Page Auditorium, Bill Bell struck back at Thomas Stith and his dirty campaigning. Bell, who’s usually very composed, seems to shine when he’s a little worked up. I have some more thoughts on the debate and campaign, but I wanted to get this video up here:

Here, the candidates answer a question posed by Bull City Rising’s Kevin Davis regarding the tone of the campaign: