Stories indexed with the term ‘polling places’

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]

Today is election day in Ann Arbor. But that only matters if you’re voting in the Democratic primary election for city council – there are no Republican primary candidates. And even if you’re inclined to vote in the Democratic primary, it only matters if you live in Ward 3 or Ward 5, where the elections are contested.

In Ward 5, the two candidates are Mike Anglin and Scott Rosencrans. In Ward 3, there’s a three-way race between Leigh Greden, LuAnne Bullington, and Stephen Kunselman.

The two wards combined comprise 20 precincts. In the 13 hours between 7 a.m. when the polls open and 8 p.m. when they close, The Chronicle aims to visit the polling locations for all 20 precincts. We’re pretty sure that we’ll run into some Chronicle readers along the way – we figure the sort of people who’ll read 5,000 words about a city council meeting will also find their way to the poll on election day.

See you soon.

And track our progress after the break. [Full Story]