Final counts in from voting
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on November 11, 2015 1:46 PM
The results of the Nov. 3 election in Wayne County have been finalized by the county Board of Elections, with the only changes occurring in the race for Pikeville town commissioner.
There were two unexpired terms on the Pikeville ballot. Incumbent Lyman G. Galloway was the only candidate to file for one of the seats, leaving the other empty and open to write-in votes. Galloway received 33 votes.
There were six write-in votes for the other Pikeville seat -- one each for six different candidates. Elections Director Dane Beavers called each one to see if they'd like to be considered for the seat. But only two of the people who received write-in votes said they wanted to be considered.
Michael Herring was selected through a drawing conducted by the Elections Board. Board member Bridgette Cowan drew the piece of paper, and Chairman Doug Wiggins announced Herring's name as the winner.
There was no change to any other elections following Tuesday's canvass.
The canvass, which began at 11 a.m., went into recess approximately half an hour after it began because of a need to process write-in votes for each race.
Wiggins said the board felt the need to recess and take extra time to make sure the write-in votes were entirely correct when they were announced.
Following the recess during the 11 a.m. canvass, the board reconvened at 3 p.m. and finalized all results of the election.
There were eight provisional ballots that were recommended to the board to be fully counted. Five of those provisional ballots were processed as such due to a computer error at the Wayne County Public Library voting site, where the printer and ballot counter were not properly connected.
Because of this, a pop-up on the computer screen would appear when trying to process the ballot and those processing ballots at the site provided those five people who cast those ballots with provisional ballots.
The board unanimously voted to accept all five of those provisional ballots, as well as the other three.
Additionally, there were three ballots recommended to be partially counted. Two of those were because the people voting said they had been given the wrong ballot and requested different ballots. Therefore, only their votes for the Goldsboro mayoral election counted. The third ballot that was partially counted was cast by a voter who contested the style of their ballot they received. That person's vote also only counted for the Goldsboro mayoral election.
There were four ballots reviewed by the board that were not counted due to voter registration errors. There was only one absentee ballot to be reviewed by the board, which was approved and was a ballot cast for the Mount Olive mayoral, commissioner-at-large and District 2 commissioner seats.
From that ballot, Ray McDonnell received a vote for mayor, Ray Thompson received a vote for commissioner-at-large and Danny Keen received a vote for District 2 commissioner.