New director tapped for Board of Elections
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 18, 2015 1:46 PM
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Dane Beavers
Rosemary Blizzard is stepping down May 27 after serving just over two and a half years as director of the Wayne County Board of Elections.
Dane Beavers, 57, an election technician with the county since September 2012, has been appointed to succeed her.
"It is just time to move onto a different career," said Mrs. Blizzard, who took over the job Sept. 20, 2012. "There is nothing behind it, it is just time.
"It had nothing to do with anything that happened in Wayne County. Wayne County has always been good to me and I appreciate that."
Mrs. Blizzard, 40, submitted her resignation to the Board of Elections in late March.
She has spent a total of nearly 16 in the elections field, having served as a former voter registration director for the state Board of Elections and as Duplin County's elections director.
Mrs. Blizzard has been assisting with the transition and said she has offered to help after she leaves office. She said she plans to stay in area and that she and her husband are building a home in western Lenoir County.
She said she has to figure out what to do next and that she has "a few irons in the fire."
Mrs. Blizzard said she hopes to work closer to home, which is important since she has two small children.
A native of the northeastern Tennessee mountains, Beavers began his elections career as an election technician in 1990 in Orange County, Fla.
He joined the Army in 1976 and spent three years in service in Bamberg, Germany. He returned home and went to college majoring in electronics and electrical engineering.
After graduation he went straight to work in his hometown working on computers.
"I ended up traveling down to Florida," he said. "I like to fish a lot, and I love the ocean. I ended up in Orlando, Florida, with a computer company. I was doing service on mainframes (computers) there."
That included a "lot of work" at the Kennedy Space Center.
"One day I was working on a computer, a mainframe, in an elections office," he said. "I met a lady there in Orlando, Florida, she was the director at the time.
"She and I hit it off well and she needed a technician to run her voting machines and offered me a position and I took it."
After 18 years, he decided a change of pace (and weather) was in order, and relocated to Raleigh with his family.
Beavers spent five years with the Wake County Board of Elections as a senior election technician.
He said when the job of election technician opened in Wayne County it provided an opportunity to move into the country, similar to his hometown area.
"It just seemed attractive to me to scale down a little bit," he said. "I had worked in counties that had over 200 precincts."
Wayne County has 30 precincts.
During his tenure as election technician in Wayne County, Beavers worked tirelessly to improve office resources while restructuring the department's voting system and election preparation procedures, board members said.
These efforts, along with efficient customer service and outreach, will continue to be a priority for the Wayne County Board of Elections with Beavers at the helm, the officials said.
Beavers said he enjoyed working with Mrs. Blizzard who is a "great director."
"I really kind of took this position in order to try and keep us the same," he said. "I hope to continue the business as usual.
"Rosemary did a real good job in this county. We managed to, I think, provide our voters with good service -- a nonpartisan service. That will stay the same."
Beavers said he is a "technical person" and will look for ways to continue to incorporate that to make the voting process more efficient.