March 2, 2026

Tomorrow is Primary Election Day. I hope that you vote if you have not already.

Reporting election results has been part of this website since its inception. Elections have consequences, as they say. Staying home has consequences for us all. Please vote.

In preparation for the primary, I conducted last December a survey of Forum recipients of the Forum’s e-mails. Each recipient was asked to report a preference between two formats for how results were reported.

It was a bruising experience. Now that my bruises have healed, and the decision must be made, here is the report I promised would be made in January.

From 1,331 recipients asked for their opinion, there were 7 responses. Four of the recipients I know; three I do not. None of the Forum’s leaders responded. There was one vote for the way results were displayed in the past. There were six votes for a proposal to include maps showing precincts that had a voice in any particular contest, and if any candidate had a majority of votes cast in a particular precinct.

The old vote tallies were typed in manually, creating the potential for error. The proposed way would simply display the data and maps posted by the NC Board of Elections.

So following the majority vote, vote totals and maps will be used for Tuesday’s primary.

The price is a bit of timeliness. Maps will not be published until all precincts in a particular election contest have reported. So publication of the Forum’s election report could be delayed until Wednesday noon.

What in this caused bruises? Nothing. It was a comment about election result reporting from one of the Forum’s most active, politically engaged participants: “It seems somewhat like a busywork exercise. (Info is on Ballotopia.)”

I have learned over the years that the Forum’s website serves a particular audience. Not the regulars at Forum meetings. Not the Ballotopia crowd. Certainly not elected officials. It serves casual inquirers down the block or across the globe googling a name, event, issue or landmark. It serves journalists and historians. In January, only 2% of the more than 3,000 visitors were returnees.

Year in and year out, the most-searched subjects are the remarkable African-Americans whose lives are recounted in the Forum’s archive. Some of those people were elevated to public office by their Mecklenburg peers.

So if you have not already voted, take the opportunity to launch a person you admire and trust into public service.

– Steve Johnston