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News & Comment About The Issues Facing Oriental.

P

olling places in Pamlico County open at 6:30am Tuesday and close 13 hours later, at 7:30pm.

Before the polls open for Election Day today, half of Pamlico County’s registered voters had already cast their ballots.

That far exceeded the expectations of Pamlico Elections Director, Lisa Bennett. “I don’t know, “ Bennett laughed on Saturday, “who’s going to show up on Election Day.”

Bennett says that 4845 voters county-wide took advantage of the early one-stop voting or voted absentee. In the early voting, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by an almost 2-1 margin. 2681 Democrats voted early, compared to 1389 Republicans, 773 Unaffiliated and 2 Libertarians. Altogether, those 4845 voters accounted for about 50% of the the 9756 registered voters in Pamlico County.

Voters from Oriental’s precinct came out in even stronger numbers than that, with 56.4% voting early. Of the 1952 registered voters in the Oriental precinct, 1101 voted early. (That’s almost as many as voted in the Oriental precinct overall in 2004.) In the early voting among Oriental precinct voters, registered Democrats were in the majority with 482 voting, but Republicans had stronger percentage of turnout than they did county wide, with 346 registered GOP voters voting early, and 273 Unaffiliated.

Looking to voting on Election Day, the 2004 turnout would suggest that about half again as many voters will go to the polls Tuesday.

Four years ago, there was a 73% turnout for the presidential election in Pamlico County. Back then, the county had 7515 registered voters, of whom, 5487 voted. 2175 of those ballots were cast early, acccounting for 29% of all registered voters, but 39% of the total votes cast.

In the 2004 elections, Oriental’s precinct had 1418 registered voters, 1113 of whom voted, accounting for a 78% turnout. Back then, 462 of Oriental’s votes were cast early, roughly a third of all registered voters.

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As of October 1st, there had been 9423 registered voters in the county, 4962 Democrats, 2695 Republicans, 2 Libertarians and 1764 Unaffiliated. 9756 registered voters are now on the rolls, indicating that more than 300 people availed themselves of the option to register and vote during the one-stop early voting period that ran from mid-October until November 1.

Posted Tuesday November 4, 2008 by Melinda Penkava