School bonds appear to pass

The Education Establishment’s tried-and-true Hobson’s Choice¹ tactic² carries the day — although much closer than they thought, at about 54 percent to 46 percent (94 percent of precincts in).

Notes

1. From Dictionary.com:

The origin of the term Hobson’s choice is said to be in the name of one Thomas Hobson (ca. 1544-1631), at Cambridge, England, who kept a livery stable and required every customer to take either the horse nearest the stable door or none at all.

2. Here was the Wake County voter’s one and only option: raise taxes on yourself to spend gobs to cover just 1/15th of new enrollment expected, make some renovations, and blow the rest on frivolous projects. Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, you “hate kids.”

Donnie Harrison winning big (Wake Co. sheriff)

Harrison was the subject of a late-minute “November surprise” revelation of an affair. Right now per WRAL he’s leading former sheriff John Baker 63 percent to 37 percent with 77 percent of the precints in.

Looks like Nifong has won

With 53 of 59 precincts reporting, he has a 5,000 vote lead. Let the smirking begin.

Who decided on the automatic scroll?

OK, I’m looking at the Durham County Board of Elections results page and somebody had programmed it to scroll automatically! If you drag the bar down to, say, find the district attorney’s race results, it flips back up to where it wants to be and continues to scroll at a snail’s pace. Same with the list of precincts. Why do Web designers insist on doing things for their readers that the readers should be able to choose to do or not to do for themselves?

Sad to see

When we created The Herald-Sun’s Web site in 2000 (I was managing editor back then) our goal was to report news on the site whenever it happened. Back then, almost all papers updated their Web sites only once a day, and that includes The News & Observer. When we went live on, ironically, Nov. 7, 2000, election day, we updated throughout the day, almost minute by minute. And we didn’t do it just for election day. We did it every day after that. It wasn’t until mid-January 2001 that The N&O finally updated their site during the day. We had seriously broken new ground.

That’s why it’s sad to see that The Herald-Sun‘s site has not had a single local election update today. Obviously the change in regime there has resulted in a change of emphasis regarding their Web presence. Instead, I and probably thousands of others in the Triangle have been going to The N&O‘s site and WRAL’s for updates on local turnout and possible precinct mess-ups.

I’m shaking my head, too

Durham DA Mike Nifong doesn’t know when to shut up. Here’s what AP reported this morning:

Nifong had a brief run-in at the polling place with Bob Harris, the play-by-play voice of the Blue Devils, when the prosecutor attempted to shake his hand. The radio announcer jumped into his car and was visibly upset when he noticed a television cameraman filming the exchange. He called county sheriff’s deputies, who took no action after they arrived.

“The majority have been very friendly. There have been a few people who have not,” a cheerful Nifong said later as he greeted voters in the parking lot of Temple Baptist Church. “There was one guy who came by with a lacrosse T-shirt. I didn’t talk to him. I might have prejudged him _ I’m not sure.”

As he waved at a passing car, he noted with a grin: “That guy just looked at me and shook his head.”

Har, har, har. Jokes about botched due process and prosecutorial misconduct are just so funny. And, hey, I have much more respect now for Bob Harris, not for calling the cops but for refusing to shake Nifong’s hand.

UPDATE: A colleague didn’t read the mention of Bob Harris as I did. He read it to mean that Harris shook Nifong’s hand but became upset when a camera caught him doing it. If that’s so is Harris a Nifong supporter then? Beats me.

They should use Durham’s system

Durham’s system of using paper ballots that scan optically is by far the best choice between old-style x-marked paper ballots that had to be counted by hand and new technology. There’s a paper trail one can always go back to, and the scanner machines have proved reliable for many years. The election officials in other states using new-fangled technology that always seems to go on the fritz should emulate. Durham. These guys especially.

The descent of John McCann

John McCann used to be a good columnist. I know. I hired him. But since the Paducah crowd bought The Herald-Sun he has become increasingly irresponsible. John is black but in the past he didn’t consider himself a “black columnist,” just a columnist who happens to be black. But now he’s opened a Barry Saunders franchise in Durham and journalism is the worse for it.

Today, for instance, his entire election day column is about black and white. He feeds the irresponsible and incorrect view that massive vote fraud has taken place since 2000. But he ignores the ACTUAL vote fraud committed by Democratic supporters in Missouri this year. He bemoans the fact that more whites are registered in Durham than blacks. And why is this? Because blacks think their vote doesn’t count. No wonder, with columnists like McCann making that irresponsible charge election after election:

But maybe it says something about the notion that many black folks don’t vote because they believe the system is rigged.

And what a shame here when desperate Democrats are itching to win back the once loyal African-American voter base — here when some pundits believe black people could decide whether control of Congress stays with the GOP or swings the other way.

But because of what’s happened in past elections — shenanigans in Florida, hanging chads, voter suppression by misinformation — there is no shortage of black people who may exercise their right not to color some ovals on Tuesday.

UPDATE: Already there’s an example of vote shenanigans today, and it’s not the kind of shenanigans that benefit conservatives or Republicans. It’s Democratic supporters trying to make it possible for people to cast a vote who haven’t even registered.

Nifong continues to demagogue

Durham’s appointed DA Mike Nifong is miffed. He’s miffed because some citizens of Durham are making this election a referendum on Nifong’s prosecutorial misconduct. Here’s what he sent to his supporters (who ARE those people?) in an email yesterday Nifong continued to play the class/race card, saying those working against him have a “sense of entitlement.” According to The Herald-Sun, here’s what he told supporters:

“They have endeavored to make this election something it is not: a referendum on a single case that [they] view as a threat to their sense of entitlement and that they do not trust a jury of Durham citizens to decide,” he said in the e-mail.

In a case where the prosecutor has said this case is not about guilt or innocence but about healing divisions in our community, with a jury chosen from a community where several have expressed the view that if the lacrosse players are not guilty they should be convicted for the past wrongs of white people, where a rogue police officer used his bias against Duke students to charge them in cases where others would get off with a warning, and where a group of 88 Duke professors advocated throwing due process out the window, why wouldn’t these guys and their supporters be trying to keep this from getting before a jury?