By Kendal Walters
Carrboro Commons Writer

My assignment: show up at the Board of Election Headquarters in Hillsborough and give my impressions as Voting Day ’07 comes to a close and the returns come in. As the county seat, Hillsborough is ‘Election Central,’ i.e. where all the votes are tabulated countywide for Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough.

Orange County Board of Elections Director Barry Garner explains to me the process of how the votes are tabulated at the respective precincts, go through a modem, and ultimately end up on the computer screen in front of us.

Orange County Board of Elections Director Barry Garner, right, fields questions from reporters about the election Tuesday night at the Orange County Board of Election headquarters in Hillsborough, as Kathy Zopfi, systems analyst, updates the returns..
Kendal Walters photo

Then, Garner hands over a tiny flash drive to systems analyst Kathy Zopfi who transfers them to the Web site so voters can clearly see the results in an organized form, at almost real- time with the action. They are using a new modem-based system, which pulls the results directly out of the data systems at the precincts.

I don’t understand all the specifics of how the equipment works, but I am certainly impressed by how easy technology has made things seem. What Garner and other staff say used to take until 10 or 11 p.m., now they have completed in about an hour from the time the polls close.

As the results pop up on the computer, the small room is filled with about 10 people, mostly reporters. Student reporters are definitely represented; I feel at home when I meet a reporter/photographer team from the Daily Tar Heel, two students from the Journalism school’s advanced reporting class, and UNC-Chapel Hill senior Stephanie Lindsey, an intern for news channel NBC 17.

As of about 8:30 p.m., we are waiting for results from three more precincts, two of which are on the phone as we speak.
The “IT guy,” or Chief Information Officer Todd Jones, says that director Garner has pushed a lot of the technological improvements and implementation of the new system.

Garner acknowledges that even though didn’t meet his goal time of finishing by 7:45 p.m., it is still a lot faster than in previous years. Expressing his satisfaction that the new system has run smoothly, he affirms, “This is democracy at work.”