Off the I-15

from the field

Just stopped at the Methodist church at the intersection of Barstow Road and Mountain View. The Barstow association of Realtors are staffing the polling station to raise money for a sick co-worker.

The county started a partners in democracy program this year that allowed organizations or businesses to run polling places and donate the stipended as a fund raiser.

Poll workers at the lutheran church are also raising money for their youth group.

Any other groups working the polls to raise money tonight?

Not really, but turnout in Yermo is breaking all kinds of records.

Before Matt Peters, the Desert Dispatch’s sports editor, went out the final home game for the Silver Valley High School girls, he stopped at the polls in Yermo to see how things were going. There is a competitive race for Yermo’s Community Services District between incumbents Michael Henderson and Loney Weems and challenger Bob Smith for the first time in a while.

One poll worker told Matt the there are about 600 registered voters in Yermo. Thus far, about 400 of them had voted. Another person told him she has voted in almost every election and has never seen so many people.

Despite the turnout, poll workers told Matt that things have been running smoothly. No long lines, they told him, but a constant stream of voters.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

The pizza has been ordered, and the newsroom is digging in for a long night of election coverage. We’ve already lost it over the CNN hologram.

So now what… It’s a lot of waiting on election night. It’s a lot of looking at maps and clicking on the county’s ROV Web site. And for JoAnne, our page designer, a night of needle point.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

I’ve met several people today who voted for the first time.

Brian Depue had never voted before but showed up his poll. Same with Stephen Rodriguez. Even though his friends didn’t agree, he felt that his vote today was important.

Several friends and I stay connected through each other using the Web service twitter. It allows you to post 140 character updates to the Web from computers and mobile phones. She posted about her first time voting today. She was surprised at how easy it was to vote.

“It made me feel like anyone could go in there and give my name and address and vote for me,” she said after voting.

She said when she asked her friends — many of whom could have voted for their first time — if they voted, and she got more “no” than “yes” responses. She did not know why so many of her friends missed the opportunity to vote in what she called historical.

“I’m glad I got to be a part of it. …It’s definitely going down in the books.”

Aaron Aupperlee | City editor

Any interesting voting stories out there right now?

We’ve entered the strange Election Day lull where we are just waiting for the results to come in.

Call me, 760-646-6025, if anything is happening at a polling location near you.

Aaron Aupperlee | City Editor

blogging from the field

I’ve been asking voters all day if they think today is an historic election. Many say yes. Either the first black president or first woman vice president.

Sard Kamel had a different reason. He immigrated to Barstow 22 years ago and connected with Obama becuase Obama’s father was also an immigrant. For Kamel, he got to vote for someone he identified with for the first time.

How’s that for history.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor.

The fact that the Pittsburgh Steelers won last night might have been a good omen for the Barack Obama camp, but today’s windy weather could even the score.

Historically, the Washington Redskins final game before the election determines the outcome of the election. According to www.nbcsports.com, if the Redskins win, the incumbent wins the election. If the Redskins lose, the challenger wins.

So Obama was most likely a Steelers fan on Monday night and was happy to see them pull out a 23-6 win.

However, weather also plays a factor in elections. According to www.accuweather.com, long lines are still forming in areas where rain is falling on election day. Bad weather has spelled doom for the Democrats and glee for the Republicans.

A team of political scientists studied the effect of weather on the voting and published their findings in a 2007 issue of The Journal of Politics. The study, The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Election, found that Democrats are more likely to stay home if there is bad weather on Election Day.

There’s wind in Barstow and rain elsewhere in the country but that does seem to be detering voters this year. The Desert Dispatch reported that turnout was higher than ever early in the day. And www.cnn.com said there are long lines everywhere.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor

My cell phone rang while I was out getting the police logs today. The man on the other end of the line had a heavy accent and seemed agitated. He wanted to know why I had never responded to a letter and an email he sent me “regarding my relationship with my brother.” I get a lot of emails from people about a lot of different things, including people’s relationships with their family members, but this one didn’t ring a bell at all. We went back and forth for several minutes, while I was trying to figure out what he was talking about, and he was clearly convinced that I was beating around the bush.

“I don’t quite understand what it is you’re looking for,” I told him. “Is this a letter to the editor, or something you think I should write a story about?”

“I want you to print my letter in the paper!” he said.

“Okay,” I said, thinking I understood. “If it’s a letter to the editor, you actually need to send it to Scott Shackford. He’s our editor.”

“I want you to print my letter in Dear Abby!” he replied, growing more and more excited.

Suddenly it all became clear. It’s not the first time someone has been under the impression that I am the Abby who pens the regular Dear Abby advice column in the paper. For the record, I am not. Dear Abby is a widely syndicated column written by Jeanne Phillips under the pen name Abigail van Buren. It was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips, some time in the 1950s, I believe.

Apparently this guy had sent his letter to the contact address listed with the column, and after becoming frustrated with waiting for it to appear, called the newspaper to complain to Abby and got transferred to my extension.

So, just to set the record straight, I’m not Dear Abby — just a lowly reporter. You can write to me for advice if you really want to, but it won’t end up in the paper.

While filming in Mr. Bonvillain’s 6th period class this week, a student pulled me aside.

“Are you with the local paper?” he asked.

I had a notebook in my back pocket, a camera around my neck, a pen behind my ear and video camera in my hand. As young as I look, I hope I can’t still pass for a high schooler. My cover was blown.

“Yeah.”

The student wrote for the Aztec Warrior, the high school paper, and wanted to know if journalism was still worth going into. Without even thinking, I responded.

“Definitely.”

He asked why, and here was my response. I pointed to the newspaper he was reading (he was looking at stock prices) and said even if we aren’t writing for these things, tapping my pen against the paper, we will still be writing. Journalism is changing, evident by the video camera I now carry in my bag. I told him some of the things going on in the Desert Dispatch newsroom with video, online and multimedia are changing the way we tell stories.

“It’s exiting,” I said. “And fun.”

Then I said that even all that information he gets “for free” on the Internet probably comes from journalists in some way. CNN.com, the New York Times Web site and even your favorite celebrity or music blog does not write itself. Somewhere, maybe hidden in their parents’ basement or at an uneven table at the local Starbucks, there is a person typing away.

But the real reason to still go into journalism, and this reason escaped me at the time, is that without journalists, without the local newspaper (regardless of how you regard us) there would be no one else to tell the community what was going on in that classroom, or what was said at the candidate forum at the high school tonight, or how the volleyball team does on Friday.

I invited the student to drop by the Desert Dispatch office to see what goes on in our newsroom. I open the invitation to any prospective journalist. Give me a call and I can show where journalism is heading at the Desert Dispatch.

Aaron Aupperlee | city editor