There are a couple of statewide Court of Appeals seats being decided, some places like Wake County are voting on District Court judges, other counties are doing other local seats like County Commissioners and School Boards, and of course the big election for our state is the Senate Primary.

When to Vote
Polls are open from 6:30am to 7:30pm.

Where to Vote
http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/PrecinctFinder.aspx

What does my Polling Place look like?
http://www.app.sboe.state.nc.us/webapps/pollingplace_search/default.aspx

Official Election Results
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/15705/23364/en/summary.html

The results will be posted there as they start to come in after polls close at 7:30 pm on Tuesday. Of course the evening news may beat them to making announcements. I wouldn't be surprised if there is extra coverage on NBC17.com or MyNC.com since they are the ones who covered the debate. If I hear about any other sources that promise to do solid coverage tomorrow evening, I'll post about them too.

5/3/2010 2:05:28 PM

After midnight, it is officially election day

5/4/2010 2:26:24 AM

I voted this morning here in Mecklenburg. Voter turnout is pretty low, I think we'll be lucky to crack 5% countywide today.

5/4/2010 1:41:57 PM

pretty disappointing turnout at my location in Wake County...i went at 530 and i was number 189

5/4/2010 5:43:12 PM

I was in the low 200s at my station at 5pm

5/4/2010 6:01:06 PM

It seems my chit chat "how to/faq" thread took off better than this one so far:
http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=593296

Voting has been kind of low here too, but the nearest early voting site to me had about 1000 voters which isn't terrible for an off year primary election. Apparently the state had about 170,000 early voters for this primary, which is down from the presidential election obviously, but up from the last off year primary.

The next hour and a half will probably see the most voters since it'll be in the after work hour. There will be a results party at Player's Retreat starting in about an hour, and basically across the street at the Brownstone Hotel the Elaine Marshall campaign is having their results night party, which, if she wins will be the biggest victory party in the state. If I wasn't stuck here studying for a final, I'd probably make the drive to Raleigh for that, since its open attendance to anyone who wants. And it'd be a chance to meet Elaine in person.

5/4/2010 6:13:17 PM

my precinct had 126 votes as of noon

5/4/2010 6:28:36 PM

I'm pulling for Elaine! I'll be able to breathe again after these results!

(BTW - Thanks for your help, Supplanter!)

5/4/2010 6:33:40 PM

I was #447 at my polling place approximately thirty minutes ago. It appeared to be getting a bit busy--a whole lot of conservatives rolling up in they Porsches last minute.

5/4/2010 6:39:01 PM

As promised, I am sharing other sites doing primary election coverage:

http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2010/05/election-night-live-blog.html
Public Policy Polling will be starting a live blog at 7pm. As a national political polling firm headquartered in NC, they've done probably the most extensive polling of the Senate race, so they should have some interesting insights. They are located in Raleigh so they may dive into some of the lower level Wake County races too.

As mentioned their is a results party at Player Retreat starting soon that seems like it'll be students, young dems, and whoever else wants to watch along with the Elaine Marshall campaign Results Party at the Brownstone Hotel, so those are 2 sites that are very short walks from campus.

This is the site to follow for Orange County elections:
http://twitter.com/search?q=ocncelect
Also 1360am radio station will be good for Orange County elections.

I haven't heard of any particularly good sites or results parties in Durham, and anything outside of the triangle is too far beyond my scope to have any insight on, but also probably too far away for many tdubbers to care about.

5/4/2010 6:54:18 PM

Early vote numbers (votes that happened before today) for Orange County:
Elaine 39% Cal 31% Lewis 23%

Lewis will probably do the best in Orange (is home county) & Durham (where he works & his campaign is head quartered). The PPP people say this is a pretty bad sign for his chances tonight, not that much of anyone thought Lewis had a chance tonight anyways.

5/4/2010 7:35:29 PM

Quote :

"63,000 votes in now and Marshall at 39.5% to 26 for Cunningham and 16 for Lewis "

In the final tally one of them needs to break 40% to avoid a run off.

5/4/2010 7:52:57 PM

i'm more interested in viability against burr in the general

5/4/2010 8:03:52 PM

I was voter #271 in my precinct at ~7:20. Pretty pitiful turnout but not unexpected or even surprising.

5/4/2010 8:11:54 PM

Speaking of viability against Burr. Over the last 6 months Elaine has consistently polled the best of the main 3 against Burr, and she has improved more against Burr than any of the other main 3. Not to mention she has less money than Cal and is still doing better than him... which is really important b/c whoever goes at Burr is going to have to be able to do it with less money.

Elaine also got more votes than the President, the Governor, and the Senator from that year in 2008 in NC, so she has some bipartisan name recognition.

I hope no runoff is necessary, but if it happens it will be on Tuesday June 22 (7 weeks away). If a run off happens then the early voting for that race would be Thursday June the 3rd until the Saturday June 19th.

[Edited on May 4, 2010 at 8:13 PM. Reason : .]

5/4/2010 8:13:20 PM

I'm most interested in viability against price and miller

5/4/2010 8:36:24 PM

Going up against Price will be Roche or Lawson (who is currently in the lead by about 1000 votes, with 2 of the 4 counties in district 4 reporting).

Lawson is too socially conservative for district 4 (basically the research triangle as a district). Lawson is anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-federal funding for education or for research in the research triangle, which is basically the whole district he is running in, and I'd be willing to bet he's against the new train infrastructure funds NC was awarded as well. And since he lost Orange County last time in particular on the order of 71.57%to 28.43% he has not shot at the general election. Its harder to say how Roche would do though, I know less about him.

5/4/2010 8:45:03 PM

The District Attorney race in Johnston County should be fairly interesting. Im interested to see if the incumbent can even get out of the primary given her bad press out of her office lately.

5/4/2010 8:51:11 PM

Some reasons not to vote for Burr:

Obstructionist - Even with the military. In addition to participating in filibuster threats, he held up Duckworth's nomination to a key position in the office of veteran affairs despite her strong qualifications. He specifically also let generals travel from Korea and Hawaii to Washington DC for a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee and then canceled the meeting as a part of a larger party wide effort of obstructionism to not even let meetings happen.

Economy - When he was first learning of the severity of the recession he told his wife to go to the ATM day after day taking out all the money it would allow b/c he was convinced that in a few days "the last thing that would come out of the ATM is money" (I can't recall his exact quote, but that isn't far off). Perhaps one of the most damning reasons not to vote against him is his meeting with representatives with members of Goldman Sachs, who then gave the max allowed contribution to his campaign, and then he took a strong stand against Wall Street Reform.

Washington Incumbent - This one might not be a big deal to everyone, but I know for some people they don't like politicians who have been in Washington forever, and Burr has been in Congress & in Washington for nearly 2 decades. But after nearly 2 decades its hard to name any big Burr accomplishments.

Women's issues - He voted against Frank's anti-rape amendment which passed with many Dem & GOP votes. He also voted for domestic violence to continue as a pre-existing condition.

Gay Rights - Probably not something TWW cares about in large amounts, but he's against repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell and favors an amendment to the US constitution to write in a ban of gay marriage.

Environment - He tends to rate horribly here. According to Wikipedia: "Burr has generally received low ratings from environmental-protection organizations. In 2007-2008, for example, he received a rating of 0% from Environment America[17], 12% from the League of Conservation Voters, and 29% from Republicans for Environmental Protection."

5/4/2010 9:10:58 PM

Burr wins by landslide.

5/4/2010 9:18:07 PM

Quote :

"He also voted for domestic violence to continue as a pre-existing condition."

can you elaborate on this? i really don't know a thing about this issue

5/4/2010 9:18:09 PM

lol because he voted against the very unpopular obamacare bill u see


at the same time, democrats voted to pay for viagra pills to convicted rapists. You see how easy this is?

5/4/2010 9:27:05 PM

http://www.elainemarshall.org/page/marshall-criticizes-burr-for-siding-with-insurance-companies--who-consider-domestic-violence-pre-existing-condition

You can read the whole thing here (which I recommend b/c much of the text functions as links to their sources), but I'll include a clip of the statement here for the thread.

Quote :

"Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, candidate for U. S. Senate, criticized incumbent Republican Senator Richard Burr for siding with insurance companies over victims of domestic violence. Burr has received huge sums of campaign money from the healthcare industry. Currently, eight states, including North Carolina, do not have laws that explicitly prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to victims of domestic violence by considering it a pre-existing condition. Burr voted against legislation to end this practice, as reported on October 4, 2009 by McClatchy News Service. On October 15, Burr aggressively questioned the leader of the National Women's Law Center, whose report brought the practice to light. According to a transcript of the exchange, a skeptical Burr repeatedly interrupted her testimony, implying that he doubted the accuracy of the report. In contrast, insurance commissioners in three of the eight states, including North Carolina, said laws in their states should be changed. North Carolina Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin said the state's laws are too vague and that he is taking measures to close any loopholes. Democracy North Carolina, a government watchdog group, released a report in August showing Burr received almost $1.7 million from insurance and healthcare interests from 2003 through 2008, his largest source of campaign funds. "

He also voted against the the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

When Elaine was young, she wasn't allowed to get a bank loan without a man.

So while women's issues might be a huge deal for many voters, you could hardly get two candidates who are farther apart than Burr and Elaine on this.

5/4/2010 9:30:11 PM

Voting is depressing. There were only three people on the entire ballot that I felt I could support - and two of them were running for the same office.

On the bright side, the entire process took about 4 minutes - 3.5 to get my ballot, and .5 to fill in two bubbles and hand it over.

5/4/2010 9:30:49 PM

He voted against domestic violence remedies long before they were eventually included in the recent Health Care Reform package.

5/4/2010 9:32:28 PM

Lawson v Price....does Lawson have a chance?

5/4/2010 9:33:11 PM

perhaps i'm an idiot but what kind of medical issues are related to domestic violence in terms of getting insurance coverage?

5/4/2010 9:33:52 PM

^^ This year is probably the best chance anybody will have. Incumbents seem to be very vulnerable this year (on both sides of the aisle). Here's to hoping Price is sent home to retirement in November.

5/4/2010 9:46:37 PM

^^since we were already having some election PM discussion, PM Sent

It looks like Elaine is up to about 37%, Cal is at about 27% with 67 of 100 counties reporting.

So it looks like we likely heading for a runoff, unless Cal decides to concede. The thing is, Public Policy Polling has looked at people's second preferences, and the people who voted for Ken Lewis will break more for Elaine than for Cal. So a runoff would probably give Elaine an even stronger win against Cal than tonight is turning out to be.

If Cal forces the runoff, the campaigns are more likely to go negative at each other which they've managed to avoid for the most part, and it delays the time until they can turn their attention and money at campaign against Burr. So I am hoping for no run off. But also it makes it harder for Burr to know who he is running against for another about 2 months, and it would get the Democratic candidates more free media coverage. So in the end a runoff may help more than it would hurt, its hard to say, but I hope Cal decides against forcing a run off.

5/4/2010 9:50:46 PM

It's always fun when the candidate you're supporting comes in 4th in a 6 man race... And it looks like I was off on my Meck turnout prediction, it's at 7.2% right now, definitely higher than I thought.

5/4/2010 10:00:08 PM

Looks like the Tea Party candidate in district 13 is barely hanging onto his lead

5/4/2010 10:17:47 PM

Elaine is giving her result's night speech living right now in Raleigh. Cal is forcing the run off. But he's about 10% points behind, and the polling suggests the minor candidates votes are going to break more for Elaine than for Cal.

It could be a good thing. Burr can't go negative against a candidate b/c he doesn't know who he's going against, meanwhile both dems can keep running against Burr, and both will get extra free media coverage.

They have both mentioned that Burr is at a Washington fundraiser tonight instead of with his supporters as he won his primary. June 22 is now the date to watch.

5/4/2010 10:28:35 PM

why in the hell would an incumbent be trying to campaign heavily in a primary? that's the dumbest pot-shot I've heard in a long time.

I hope they continue this trend of trivial attacks against Burr.

5/4/2010 10:39:35 PM

Elaine's victory party speech (not a full fledged victory b/c of the run off, but she beat the nearest opponent by about 10% so this was the closest thing to a victory speech tonight from any of the campaigns):
http://www.wral.com/news/local/politics/video/7544228/

5/5/2010 2:18:06 AM

Burr (and Dole) were the only ones who sided with the Navy when they tried to devastate migratory habitat by building that landing field. The sooner he is gone, the better.

5/5/2010 7:22:41 AM

Quote :

"Lawson v Price....does Lawson have a chance?"

I hope so. Price stands for the status quo and getting re-elected, nothing more. I'm sure the hardcore statists and UNC Marxists, that support maximizing centralized power, love him to death. Lawson is a true liberty candidate that wants to follow the constitution. I know liberals find it tempting to make sweeping laws and regulations on the federal level, but the federal government is the source of our problems. When you give them the power to do good, you give them the power to do bad, and they will use it.

It's sad that the common ground existing between the liberty movement and the progressive movement can't be noticed. You can't separate economic and social freedom. Progressives claim to stand up for civil liberties, but they're quick to throw individual rights under the bus if it means passing some dubious law that sounds compassionate on the surface. I saw plenty of liberals marching with signs that said "get out of Iraq now" before Obama was elected. Now most of them seem to have turned a blind eye for the sake of political uniformity.

5/5/2010 3:04:17 PM

Quote :

"Price stands for the status quo and getting re-elected, nothing more. "

Not according to his Issues page.

Quote :

"I'm sure the hardcore statists and UNC Marxists, that support maximizing centralized power,"

Say what? Where were the Conservatives when the DHS was created?

Quote :

"I know liberals find it tempting to make sweeping laws and regulations on the federal level, but the federal government is the source of our problems."

Again, where was everyone from 2001-2008?

Quote :

"When you give them the power to do good, you give them the power to do bad, and they will use it."

Agreed, but don't we have the power to remove them from office?

Quote :

"Progressives claim to stand up for civil liberties, but they're quick to throw individual rights under the bus if it means passing some dubious law that sounds compassionate on the surface."

Like that Immigration Law in Arizona?

Quote :

"I saw plenty of liberals marching with signs that said "get out of Iraq now" before Obama was elected. Now most of them seem to have turned a blind eye for the sake of political uniformity."

Bullshit. He's gotten plenty of flack from Liberals for not pulling out of this war.

5/5/2010 3:20:41 PM

I know one democrat who has said President Obama is wrong on war issues: Elaine Marshall.

5/5/2010 3:50:11 PM

Quote :

"Gay Rights - Probably not something TWW cares about in large amounts"

this made me laugh

5/5/2010 4:05:23 PM

I think when I said "in large amounts" I was going for "a great deal" but decided to replace it with the most awkward wording I could think of instead.

5/5/2010 4:07:22 PM

Quote :

"Again, where was everyone from 2001-2008?"

writing in "no confidence"

5/5/2010 4:55:53 PM

so do "no confidence" votes actually get counted? or do they just get filed in the trash.


If they are counted I may actually vote this year

5/5/2010 5:01:36 PM

i agree price has maybe been around for too long but he is incredibly well-liked by his constituents. i'd like to see some new blood in that office but only if we can find a good liberal replacement

5/5/2010 6:12:16 PM

Quote :

"Voting is depressing."

So true.

Campaigners at my precinct were all giving me pamphlets and being like, "He's very conservative. I mean, very conservative. He's pro-life. You know...he understands what we want and what we need. Did I mention he's pro-life?"

It was a gauntlet of facepalm.

5/5/2010 11:25:05 PM

^ I almost would have preferred that. No campaigner even wanted to talk to me.

Every single person at my Durham precinct was black (staff, voters, campaign volunteers - everybody), because that is the makeup of the area. I am white.

There were two older black ladies walking toward the door at the same time I did. The volunteers at the only two campaign tables both started their pitch "Ladies, can I talk with you for a moment about the race for X?"

I turned toward them, and there was an awkward moment or two, where it was obvious they were not requesting my attention. I was going to let it go, but instead I was a little passive-aggressive. On the way out, I said "It seemed my white vote wasn't good enough for you, so you didn't get it." No response. I probably should have just left it alone, but it was pretty messed up.

5/6/2010 4:51:26 AM

^ As someone who has worked the polls before, I will say that sometimes you just gotta play the odds, even if it is a little messed up. Me and the Democrat poll worker at the polls Tuesday basically ended up playing, "Who's voter is this, yours or mine?" with every voter that got out of their car. If you're at a less busy precinct both sides usually get the chance to approach the voter, but at a busier one, if I was a Dem and it was between a young white male and two older black ladies, I probably would have chosen the two ladies as well.

5/6/2010 6:23:39 AM

Yeah, I totally get that. But the 3 of us were the only voters present, and there weren't even any inside. Still outnumbered by the campaigning people.

I would be doing the exact same calculus if there were more people than I could handle as a volunteer. But it was as obvious as could be, in this case.

Besides, a young white male in my precinct would be just about as likely to be 'theirs' as the older black ladies. City-dwelling, obviously college-educated (from the way I was dressed), and young = democrat, although not quite as assuredly as old, black female = democrat.

[Edited on May 6, 2010 at 6:37 AM. Reason : .]

5/6/2010 6:36:19 AM