Barack-o-lanterns

Barack-o-lantern, originally uploaded by nicomachus.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., steps off the plane carrying a pumpkin at Midway Airport in Chicago Friday, Oct. 31, 2008.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

UPDATE: 88,521 voters in Durham have voted early.

things are fine

79,222 voters in Durham didn’t get the memo

Obama in Raleigh

Barack Obama was in Raleigh yesterday; so were 25,000 of his closest friends in the Tarheel state.

A free event, the line to get in wrapped around several city blocks.

Rodney Hines, the No Hands King was among Obama’s supporters who came out for the rally.

UPDATE: As of Wednesday, 70,896 people have already voted in Durham, or 42% of registered voters.

Bike for Barack


Bike for Barack from Phillip Barron on Vimeo.

in the days Obama

Out canvassing with friends this weekend, we came across Lewis Days‘ house. Days, the bike man, is eager to vote in this historic election, and agreed to let us place a sign in his yard.

UPDATE: As of the end of the day Sunday, Durham county is up to 53,247 votes.

Voting in Durham

As of October 1st, the Durham Board of Elections listed 168,482 “active voters” in Durham. (Active voters is a technical term used, but not defined, by the Board of Elections.)

Early voting has started; in fact we’re 10 days into the 17 days of One Stop Voting. I voted yesterday, and the machine said that my ballot was the 9735th ballot read. That number represents the cumulative total for that particular voting location (in my case, the Board of Elections, which is downtown across the street from the old Durham Bull ballpark). And that got me curious about how voting was going in the rest of Durham.

As of the end of the day yesterday (Friday), 44,563 people have already voted in Durham County.

So, if all of the people who have voted were considered by October 1st to be active voters, then that means that Durham has already a 44% 27% rate of voter turnout. Of course, that percentage is actually lower, given the record-breaking number of new registrants and first time voters signed up to vote in this election. Nevertheless, for 44,563 people to have voted already bodes well for the possibility of setting new records in Durham for voter turnout.

For some sense of perspective, in this May’s primary, 80,321 people voted.
In the 2006 general election, Durham had 56,213 turn out to vote.
In 2004, 111,685.
In 2002, 67,505.
And in 2000, 87,467.

With early voting locations at the Durham Board of Elections office, Duke University, East Regional Library, Forestview Elementary, North Carolina Central University, North, Regional Library, and Southwest Elementary and with early voting dates every day of the week (including Saturdays and Sundays), there is no excuse not to vote this year.

If you wait until Election Day (November 4th), you need to vote at your precinct. If you don’t know where that is, try using this simple tool to find your polling place. http://maps.google.com/vote

Obama’s counting on us to get out the vote. No excuses.

Other accounts of early voting:
Diane Daniel
Barry Ragin

video cartography

Genuine vital integrity does not consist in satisfaction, in attainment, in arrival. As Cervantes said long since, “The road is always better than the inn.” The very name is a disturbing one; this time calls itself “modern,” that is to say, final, definitive, in whose presence all the rest is mere preterite, humble preparation and aspiration towards this present. That faith in modern culture was a gloomy one. It meant that to-morrow was to be in all essentials similar to to-day, that progress consisted merely in advancing, for all time to be, along a road identical to the one already under our feet. Such a road is rather a kind of elastic prison which stretches on without ever setting us free.

Nowadays we no longer know what is going to happen to-morrow in our world, and this causes us a secret joy; because that very impossibility of foresight, that horizon ever open to all contingencies, constitute authentic life, the true fullness of our existence.

– José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

 

video cartography: Durham, NC from Phillip Barron on Vimeo.

6 minutes and 20 seconds of point-of-view film and video of downtown Durham, North Carolina. The video is composed of scenes from 1942, 1947, 2007, and 2008. Through the repeated capturing (on film and in byte) of locations through time, we are able to navigate a changing landscape in urban Durham. 

We live in a visual culture. From advertising to gallery art to Hollywood films to documentary photography, the image has never been more powerful throughout human history than it is today. With the advent of digital mapping and point-of-view digital image products (e.g. Google Maps Streetview), the line between cartography and video is being blurred. 

This video is part of the North Carolina Counter Cartographies Convergence, September — October 2008, and was made possible with a grant from the Triangle Community Foundation.

Critical (or Courteous) Mass?

Either way, it’s tonight… Meet at Major, 5:35pm.

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nicomachus.net is the virtual representation of Phillip Barron, who is responsible for all of the writing and photography, unless otherwise credited. Want to know more?


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