Voters heading to polls Tuesday
By Steve Herring
Published in News on November 4, 2013 1:46 PM
The 13 days of one-stop voting drew 256 people who cast their ballots in the handful of municipal and sanitary district board elections to be decided Tuesday.
The polls will be open from 6:30 a.m. until 7:30 p.m.
The only contested municipal races are in Mount Olive. Candidates are running unopposed in Pikeville and Walnut Creek, while offices in Seven Springs and Eureka will be decided by write-ins.
Sanitary district elections are being held for Belfast-Patetown, Eastern Wayne, Fork Township, Southeastern Wayne and Southern Wayne.
In the past, municipal elections have drawn even fewer one-stop voters, election officials said. In 2009, for example, only 59 people voted one-stop.
"For this type of election, it was a bumper crop," Wayne County Board of Elections Director Rosemary Blizzard said.
In the election four years ago, only 1,076 of the roughly 32,000 eligible voters, or about 3.32 percent voted. Most of them were in Mount Olive and Pikeville, Mrs. Blizzard said.
This year, there are approximately 31,014 people eligible to vote in Tuesday's election.
Mrs. Blizzard reminded voters that the state's new voter identification law is not effective until 2016.
Most of the questions her office has received concerns sanitary districts and who can vote in them, she said. Only people living inside the district boundaries can vote in the election. People who receive services through the district, but who live outside the district boundaries, cannot.
Mrs. Blizzard did not offer a prediction for voter turnout, but she did say she does not expect to find long lines at the polling places.
Because of the limited nature of the elections, not all county precincts will be open. The ones that will be open are:
* No. 1, Fremont UMC
* No. 2, Eureka UMC
* No. 3, Little River Fire Station
* No. 4, Pikeville Fire Station
* No. 5, Woodmen of the World
* No. 6, Saulston UMC
* No. 7, New Hope Fire Station
* No. 8, Oakland Fire Station
* No. 9, Westwood UMC
* No. 13, Kingdom Life Ministries International
* No. 14, New Hope Friends Church
* No. 15, Seven Springs Baptist Church
* No. 16, American Legion Post 11
* No. 22, Faith Alliance Church
* No. 23, Goldsboro Wesleyan Church
* No. 25, Mount Olive Civic Center
* No. 26, Dudley Fire Station
* No. 27, Mays Chapel Church
* No. 28, Indian Springs Fire Station
* No. 30, Southern Academy
Voters assigned to Precinct 12 (Oak Forest Church of Christ) will be temporarily transferred to Precinct 22 (Faith Alliance Church) for this election only because of scheduling conflict at the church. Voters have been notified of the change, elections officials said.
The Board of Elections will begin counting absentee ballots on Tuesday at 5 p.m. The results will not be released until 7:30 p.m.
Election results will be posted on the Board of Elections website Tuesday night. Go to waynegov.com, click on "Dept (A-H)" and select "Board of Elections."
Vote totals are unofficial until the vote canvass on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 11 a.m. at the Board of Elections office at 209 S. William St.