Obama gets state's 15 electoral votes

A day of history and emotion

RALEIGH -- Democrat Barack Obama officially won North Carolina's presidential vote Monday in a ceremony that made up with history and emotion what it lacked in suspense.

The 15 members of the state's Electoral College met in the Old House Chambers in the Capitol at noon -- the same time similar groups were meeting in the nation's other 49 state capitals to choose a new president.

There was no suspense over the outcome. All 15 members were required by law to vote for Obama as a result of his narrow victory over Republican John McCain (49.7 percent to 49.3 percent) in North Carolina last month.

But the occasion was packed with emotion, as electors cast ballots to make Obama the nation's first president of black descent. The event filled not only the House chambers, but the nearby Senate chambers as well.

Virginia Tillett, an elector from Manteo and an African-American, said she remembered familiar voices telling her "to hang in there ... change is coming."

"I remember my grandmother, who lived to be 89 years old," Tillett, 67, a Dare County commissioner, said later in an interview. "I heard people like my deceased father-in-law, who lived to be 100. I heard voices like my mother, who is now 87.

"I heard all these voices say: 'Didn't I tell you?' "

The past was very much present in the ornate House Chambers, built in 1840 and watched over by a portrait of President George Washington, a slaveholder.

Lavonia Allison, a Democratic activist from Durham, thought of leaders of the civil rights movement who are not alive to witness the moment. Judge James Wynn of the N.C. Court of Appeals recalled when slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person under the U.S. Constitution.

In a symbolic generational move, Obama was nominated jointly by former U.S. Attorney Janice Cole, 61, of Hertford, and Kara Hollingsworth, 29, of Fayetteville. Both are African-Americans.

Hollingsworth, who was not alive in 1976, the last time a Democratic presidential candidate won in North Carolina, said the moment was poignant to her for a number of reasons.

Her husband, Robert, left the Army in recent weeks after having served two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. And Hollingsworth said it is important for her daughters, Dominique, 8, and Nia, 2, to realize that there are no barriers to what they might become.

"I can definitely say to them: Whatever you want to be, you can be," she said.