As #SunshineWeek winds down, just a quick thread about a pretty awesome tradition here in North Carolina.

For 8 years now, we've brought together a coalition of journalists from across the state interested in telling stories to promote open government and transparency. It started in 2015, when we examined a year's worth of travel records from the state's top leaders, combining the forces of @wral, @newsobserver, @theobserver, @SpecNews1RDU, @fayobserver & @wectnews. wral.com/records-show-b…

wral.com/governor-s-off…

Happy Sunshine Week!

@ncwatchdognet obtained the 2021 working calendars of North Carolina's top government leaders via public requests and made them all searchable here: newsobserver.com/news/politics-… @ncwatchdognet One of the interesting things about this story was our analysis of Gov. Roy Cooper's public schedule.

If you're a reporter in this state, you're probably used to getting emails exactly like this every morning.

CDC now says residents of counties with "high" or "substantial" community spread should mask up indoors – even if they're vaccinated.

For NC, that's all but 21 counties. CDC publishes a US map showing "level of community transmission," but no way to download the data (that I can see at least).

covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra…

But what if we REALLY WANT the data? Follow along for a few tips on prying it loose.

A few updates on the potential votes left to count in North Carolina, as of new data 11/6 AM.

We're now looking at a *maximum ceiling* of 171,000 potential uncounted votes.

To see how that breaks down, let's get into the math! #ncpol Outstanding mail-in ballot requests now down to ~98,000. As expected, it's ticked down over the last few days as ballots arrive. But:
- Many ballots may never be returned/returned on time
- This doesn't account for voters who changed their minds and voted on Election Day.

Spent today doing a deep dive on the number of potential ballots left to count in North Carolina.

All told, that number comes out to about 172,000. Here's how we got there...
newsobserver.com/news/politics-… #ncpol First up: outstanding absentee ballots. An analysis of data as of Thursday AM shows about 108,000 in the "outstanding absentee".

That number is expected to decrease over the next few days, as it did between today and yesterday, when it was at about 116,000.

NC State Board of Elections has a livestreaming coming up on the post-election process in North Carolina. Tune in here: newsobserver.com/news/politics-… #ncpol Per @NCSBE Director Karen Brinson Bell, number of estimated outstanding ballot still stands at 117,000.

Board still working to gather number of provisional ballots, but under state law, report on the number of those ballots is due by noon Thursday. #NCpol

For those of you wondering how national reporters are getting estimates of 200,000-300,000 outstanding mail-in ballots in North Carolina, so are we.

Actually, we're not. It's wrong.

The number to watch is about 117,000 estimated outstanding ballots, per state data. And again, big caveats:
1) Based on ballot requests, so some won't be counted because they weren't:
a) Postmarked by 11/3
b) Received by 11/12
c) Sent at all
d.) Properly completed
2) Doesn't account for outstanding ballots where voters voted on Election Day

The @AP has called all but 5 NC legislative races based on unofficial results as of this morning (4 in the state House, 1 in the state Senate).

In all of them, the number of estimated outstanding mail-in ballots is greater than the margin.
newsobserver.com/news/politics-… #ncpol @AP Farkas (D)-Jones (R), House 9
- Farkas leads by 814
- Estimated 863 mail-in ballots outstanding