Board certifies election results
By Steve Herring
Published in News on November 13, 2013 1:46 PM
It took less than 15 minutes Tuesday morning for the Wayne County Board of Elections to certify the results of last week's municipal and sanitary district elections that included upset wins by write-in candidates in Pikeville.
The vote canvass confirmed that write-in candidates won the mayor's office and two board seats in Pikeville.
Write-in candidate Glenn Hartman had 84 votes for mayor to defeat Commissioner Todd Anderson, who had 61 votes.
In the commissioners' race, write-ins Al Greene and Todd Smith had 89 and 86 votes respectively to defeat Eric Snoody, who had 43, and Garrett Johnston, who had 40. Commissioner Lyman Galloway, who did not seek re-election, received seven votes.
Outgoing Mayor Johnny Weaver confirmed that a concerted write-in effort had been undertaken by town residents.
Write-ins also decided the elections in Seven Springs and Eureka, where no one had filed for the two board seats and mayor's office.
Seven Springs Mayor Allen Cash won another term with 29 votes. Robert Mozingo received 8.
Ronda Hughes received 31 votes to be re-elected to the town board. John H. Lee II won the second seat with 28 votes.
In Eureka, Mayor Doug Booth received all 24 write-in votes to be re-elected. Commissioner Billy Martin had 21 votes to win one of the two board seats, and David Elmore had 12 votes to win the other.
"We did the Seven Springs recount, too, but that did not change the results at all," Wayne County Elections Director Rosemary Blizzard said. "It was just an arithmetic error. Everything checks out and looks balanced."
A preliminary hearing on a protest filed in the Southeastern Wayne Sanitary District election by James Taylor was not held.
Taylor, one of the five winners in that election, filed the protest because one of the candidates, Jim Barnwell, did not live in the district and should not have been on the ballot.
A mistake in the elections record had placed Barnwell in the district, she said.
Taylor dropped the protest since Barnwell was not among the top five vote-getters, Mrs. Blizzard said.