Election results just a mouse click away

Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2000 | 9:04 a.m.

When settling down in front of the TV on election night to watch the results come in, is the following a familiar monologue?

"When are they ever going to give the totals of the races I'm interested in? There goes the doorbell. Ahhh, back to my seat, darn, missed those results. Gotta wait for them to come around again. I'll go make a sandwich -- ahhh! missed them again. Drat!

"Who is this guy they are interviewing? Give me the damn numbers! Oh no, gotta go to the bathroom. Yes, back to my seat; oh no, just in time to hear the tail end of what a close race my candidate is in, and the numbers have vanished from the screen!"

Hold on, don't put your fist through the set. There is an easier way to get all of the up-to-the-minute election results -- Vegas.com -- one of the state's largest computer Internet websites and a sister company of the Las Vegas Sun.

"Our website is very user friendly, so you can quickly access all of the races or just the races you are interested in," said Bryan Allison, general manager of Vegas.com, which gets more than 1 million hits a day. "Also, you can click on the candidates' names to get their profiles and get links to Sun stories, columns and editorials about them."

Jennifer Whitehair, online editor for Vegas.com, says the profiles will provide Web viewers with important information about the office-seekers, including their opinions on the key issues -- information that can be especially useful come the general runoff.

"We get a big audience not only locally, but also from out of state -- like Washington, D.C., and the rest of the East Coast -- from people who cannot just turn on their TV and get the local results," she said. "They go to the Web to get the results quickly."

Allison noted what any frustrated election-night TV viewer has experienced: "You are lucky to get the results of smaller races you are interested in once every 15 minutes. You miss them and you have to wait for them to loop around again."

At Vegas.com you'll get the tallies of the primary races as quickly as Clark County election headquarters can count the votes, Allison said, noting that plans are to update the Sun's easy-to-follow online election results every 10 minutes.