50,000 votes and climbing!

Okay, technically it's 49,949 but it's pretty darned close. That's the number of people who have already cast ballots in Durham County as of 10/25/08. (All stats in this post courtesy of the Durham Board of Elections and the BOE PDF.)

Here's the breakdown by site:

Board of Elections office: 10, 702 (21%)
Duke: 4,498 (9%)
East Regional Library: 5,320 (11%)
Forestview Elementary: 3,526 (7%)
NC Central: 7,054 (14%)
North Regional Library: 9,429 (19%)
Southwest Elementary: 9,420 (19%)

There are 175,000 registered voters in Durham and the BOE is expecting about 90-100,000 total early voters, so expect to see some big increases in the numbers above by the end of the day on November 1.

One number leaps out: why is Duke so paltry? Apparently there was a lot of interest in and support from the Duke community to get this location (new this year) but that's a seriously puny turnout. C'mon Blue Devils -- do something right for a change.

Go democracy!

EDIT: After checking the State Board of Elections site it looks like more than 1 million people in the state have already voted early, making Durham's total about 5% of the statewide total. The state site has breakdowns in race and party as well ... more on that later.

Last night's debate in a nutshell

Be sure not to miss John McPenguin, either.

Oh, Indy

I picked up the latest Independent Weekly at the library this afternoon and was appalled by the cover. No, silly, you know I'm a fan of local food, but cripes, who thought of this headline?

EAT WHERE YOU'RE AT

I know people bitch all the time about grammar these days but would it hurt a newspaper to use grammar correctly on the cover? Okay, you're saying, it's just an alternative paper. True, but given that the Herald-Sun is now trumpeting how great they are only because the N&O staff is dropping like flies alternative papers may be all we're left with one day. (No offense intended to the delightful M. Chen at the H-S.)

On the other hand, I shouldn't complain too much. The article is about cool places to eat in the periphery of the Triangle and well worth a read.

And while I was there searching for an image of the actual cover (which I clearly failed to locate) I read this amazing story of a guy who wrote to Joe Biden in '72 after his wife and children were killed and Biden's response. You may have seen Biden's reference to this in the debate with She Who Must Not Be Named but this made it even more real for me. Very touching.

P.S. Feel free to find all the grammatical mistakes above, but remember, I don't get paid to write or edit! (Clearly.)