Want Elmhurst mayoral results? Look no further.
Lest we get too caught up in self-congratulatory euphoria over our coverage of local elections this week, some people are happy to provide us with a healthy dose of humility.
Consider this note to Robert Sanchez, who filed no less than three stories on election night, including the race for Wheaton City Council:
"... the feature on the Wheaton Council elections raised my English teacher hackles. First, even junior high students know that 'got' is not a viable choice of vocabulary. Candidates cannot 'get' votes: they 'receive' votes. Further, in the same article, the word 'again' was duplicated in the same sentence..."
Or this one, which arrived Thursday:
"Subject: Elmhurst Election Results
"Message: What is the big secret? 2 days in a row and Elmhurst is not mentioned anywhere that I can find. I still don't know who the next Mayor will be."
Well, ya got me there. The Daily Herald does not provide home delivery in Elmhurst, so we didn't cover that race. But for you, gentle reader, I will provide some inside information:
With all 53 precincts reporting, unofficial vote totals show Peter DiCianni the winner, capturing 4,665 votes, or almost 39 percent, in a four-way race for Elmhurst mayor.
Truthfully, even though we in the DuPage office produced 28 stories on election night (out of 136 newspaperwide), there still was a lot of stuff we skipped. But we did include so-called "agate" results - columns of vote totals from the hundreds of candidates seeking election in municipal, school, park, library and fire boards and township races.
Local elections are a real head-scratcher. On one hand, so many of you - 80 percent in DuPage County - don't care enough to vote. On the other, those of you who care, care passionately.
For instance, as we pointed out in our "polling peculiarities" story in Thursday's editions, 2,465 votes were cast in Hanover Park. Our 10 election-related Hanover Park stories, letters to Fence Post and editorials posted online drew 1,633 comments.
And it was a record-setting night at dailyherald.com. On Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, we published 145 stories and 45 photos online. On Tuesday, our total daily page views were 598,131, setting a record.
But we shattered that record on Wednesday, with 653,416 page views. (And a 29 percent increase in the number of "unique" viewers.) The increased traffic was almost exclusively due to the election. Our most-viewed page was the homepage, logically. But No. 2 was the pages with results, candidate info, stories, letters and endorsements. Also that day, 40 of our 50 top-read items were election-related stories and photo galleries.
In fact, our Web site got more hits for the local election than it did for the presidential election five months ago. In short, said Kurt Gessler, assistant managing editor/online, "On Wednesday, we were the place to be - for those who gave a damn :)"
Just one more election-related story, then I'll leave the topic alone for quite a while, I promise.
How'd you like the photo of our just-elected mayors on the front page of Thursday's paper? Cheerful bunch, aren't they? Well, we've been trying - unsuccessfully - to pull off that photo for years. But this week we stopped trying to coordinate everyone's schedule; we just set a time and place and asked everyone to show up. Got pretty darned good compliance. Logistics lesson learned.
So, here's an invitation to all successful mayoral candidates in the next election: 6 p.m. April 6, 2011 by the big retention pond at the DuPage County complex.
Be there or be square.
jdavis@dailyherald.com