Stories indexed with the term ‘Michigan’

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Editor’s note: This column includes a request for help in logging early election results straight from polling locations after the polls close at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. If you’d like to help – by gaining editing access to a shared spreadsheet, or by texting, Tweeting, or calling in results to us – shoot us an email: dave.askins@annarborchronicle.com

The general election on Tuesday, Nov. 2 comes after eight games have been played on a 12-game schedule for the University of Michigan football team. The guys in the winged helmets are currently sitting at 5-3, which is better than the 2-7 record they’d achieved at the same point during their 2008 campaign.

For me, the 2008 general election – and because I am quick to generalize, all elections – will always be linked to UM football. They’re linked in the form of Jonas Mouton, a linebacker I met in the course of my election day travels in 2008. Mouton was nearly denied the franchise when he tried to vote at the Pioneer High School precinct, but was finally able to cast his ballot.

Elections are, of course, not one bit like a football game, let alone a football season – that’s purely a writerly ploy to set up some kind of thematic backdrop against which I can ask readers a favor: We’re asking for help in collecting precinct-level election results on Tuesday night.

Otherwise put, on Tuesday evening, we’d like to ask that you play for The Chronicle’s team. To quote legendary UM coach Bo Schembechler, when we collect the precinct level results, “we’re gonna play together as a team. We’re gonna believe in each other, we’re not gonna criticize each other, we’re not gonna talk about each other, we’re gonna encourage each other.”

Veteran consumers of local online information know that election results for all the precincts in Washtenaw County will eventually be available on the county clerk’s website. As results are filed with the clerk, election staff upload them incrementally. With polls closing at 8 p.m., and poll closing procedures taking roughly 30-60 minutes to complete, the first results typically begin to appear on the clerk’s website towards 10 p.m. and are generally uploaded for the entire county sometime in the early morning hours, if not sooner. That’s pretty quick, actually.

But it’s not Denard Robinson quick. [Full Story]

“Did you hear why the Michigan-Ohio State game might be canceled? Because Michigan can’t get past Toledo.”

David Creighton told the joke while sitting at a table in Vinology’s Bubble Room with Joel Goldberg and Claudia Tyagi, waiting to be served 30 glasses of wine. Each. Everyone laughed – and they weren’t even hammered.

In fact, despite the fact that plenty of people who are focused on the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry this weekend will be intent on getting hammered, the gathering at Vinology on Sunday evening had an entirely different goal: To highlight the quality of each states’ wines, in the setting of a friendly competition staged in Ann Arbor and Columbus.

Here’s some words about the event for you to savor before we reveal the winners, but if you read The Chronicle like you drink your wine – straight from the bottle in one long chug – scroll right down to the bottom. [Full Story]