As every regular Weber County Forum reader is well aware, today is Ogden City Municipal Election Day. The polls open at 7:00 a.m., and will remain in business until 8:00 this evening at all Ogden City voter precinct polling places, as indicated by the Ogden IT Department's nifty new interactive Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping software:
We're urging all WCF readers to make a special effort to show up to vote for the candidates whom we've endorsed, Jennifer Neil, Amy Wicks and Anyone but Brandon Stephenson. All prospective voters should also be aware that although supporters of the opposition crony capitalist Godfreyite-style Candidate Faction don't score high marks for political sophistication, they are reliable
And don't forget, folks, Godfreite-style Faction mayoral candidate Stephenson, in particular, was "FOR" The Malans Basin & Mountain Gondola Development Project, long before he was "against it." Hopefully that memory will assist our readers in building up a sufficient head of steam to propel them to their polling places to vote for the best-qualified mayoral candidate, Anyone but Brandon Stephenson.
If you still need to "bone up" on the qualifications of today's candidates however, be sure to take a look at our right sidebar election module, and our General Election Candidate Roster in particular, where you'll find a true wealth of candidate information, including candidate profiles, web links, election stories, etc. Without a doubt, the material contained therein is the most robust collection of informative 2011 Ogden Municipal Election tidbits which can be found anywhere on the web, (even if we do say so ourselves).
The tallying of votes will begin shortly after 8:00 p.m. Taking into account the logistics of physically transporting polling data from individual polling places to the "counting room," and assembling and recording the results, our experience with earlier elections dictates that final vote counts are unlikely to be made public much earlier than 9:00 p.m. In that connection however, we're now linking Ogden City's online vote tallying software, to give our readers plenty of time to tune up their own computers, and make sure their own Adobe Flash Player utility software is fully updated. Here's the Ogden City online vote tally link. The real-time online utility is up and running right now, so if it isn't displaying on your computer, you obviously have some Flash Player tinkering to do:
As we await this evening's election results however, we'll invite anyone and everyone to chime in with a little election day conversation. Feedback about how your voting experience went today would be most welcome, not only for the benefit of your blogmeister, but also for the thousand or more other individual WCF readers whom we anticipate will be checking in to monitor election results today.
That' it for now, Gentle Readers.
Who'd like to go out on a limb and predict today's election outcome? Who'll be the first to just generally throw in their own 2¢? Who'd merely like to blow off a little pent up steam? Who'll breathe a welcome sigh of relief once the 2011 Municipal Election process is finally over, and Boss Godfrey "shuffles off to Buffalo"?
Have at it, O Gentle Ones.
Update 11/8/11 7:47 p.m.: We've gotten word that at least one of our readers is having trouble with the above-linked 2011 Municipal General Election Real-time Tallies feed. Here's a quick and dirty solution, in the event that a Flash Player update doesn't solve your problem. Simply click the link below, which will take you to Ogden Channel 17's online video broadcast, where vote tallies will be simulcast tonight:
Using this solution, the graphics quality will be inferior, and you won't have some of the "slick" technical advantages of the online Flash Player-based software, but at least you'll be able to follow the basic vote count in real-time as tonight's vote tallies roll in.
(And Comcast subscribers can simply tune into Channel 17 on their home TV sets, of course.)
Hoping this helps.
Update 11/8/11 9:16 p.m.: OK folks, the tote board is now starting to light up, with seven precincts reporting in.
Update 11/8/11 10:40 p.m.: Final (unofficial) tally from the Ogden City site, with 100% of 52 precincts reported:
Mayor
Caldwell 4281 (62%)
Stephenson 2656 (38%)
Conlin 2
Council Ward 2
Hyer 918 (56%)
Neil 722 (44%)
Council Ward 4
Gochnour 2741 (100%)
Council Seat "C"
Wicks 3345 (60%)
Thompson 1826 (33%)
Safsten 432 (8%)
That's it, folks. Looks like we'll move forward with a Council with a very similar makeup as we have now, and a new Mayor who's agenda still remains unknown.
Update 11/8/11 11:31 p.m.: Uh-0h. Looks like the final tallies have been adjusted once again on the Ogden City Site. Here's the latest:
Mayor
Caldwell 4281 (61%) W
Stephenson 2656 (38%)
Conlin 73
Council Ward 2
Hyer 918 (56%) W
Neil 722 (44%)
Council Ward 4
Gochnour 2741 (100%) W
Council Seat "C"
Wicks 3345 (49%) W
Thompson 1826 (27%)
Safsten 1645 (24%)
What's up with that? Did Comrade Safsten arrive in the "counting room" at the last minute, with a wheelbarrow full of uncounted ballots? We certainly wouldn't put it past him.
And here's the Election Summary Report from the Weber County website, which corresponds with these newly-amended Council At-large "C" numbers:
Go figure! Kinda shakes your confidence in Ogden City's IT Department, doesn't it?
All we can say at this juncture... we never had problems like this when we were still using paper ballots.
So what say our gentle readers about all this?
