I love Election Days. It’s one of the few days that there’s excitement in the air if you work in journalism.
I’ve seen a lot a number of elections over the years. At one newspaper stop, our entire staff used to split up which polling places we were to cover. We would each get a tape of the election results and then use an Excel spreadsheet to do our own tally of the results.
Then, we would post our results on our website usually before they would release them at the courthouse.
Another stop I was at, we set up shop at the courthouse with a mobile hot spot and posted our results on the Internet. It was fun being there with other journalists and all of the candidates who were hanging out to see the returns come in.
Then here, election night usually means you’re hanging out at the Decatur Fire Department eating hamburgers and other food while they post the results from the courthouse on a projection screen. Again, most of the candidates are there watching the returns come in. In fact, you can even see when the poll workers arrive at the courthouse.
I was talking with someone this week that told me how that Newton used to make election night a big night. It was almost like a mini Loose Caboose with food, vendors and the Newton Record posted the numbers on a big board.
I guess that big board now is our website. If you missed it last night, log on to newtoncountyappeal.com to see the results.
Contact Brent at bmaze@-newtoncountyappeal.com.
