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hat fifth seat on Oriental’s Town Board is hard-won.

Elections director for Pamlico County, Lisa Bennett, says that with 100% of the votes counted from Tuesday’s voting, there is a one vote difference between the 5th place finisher, former commissioner Warren Johnson, and 6th place finisher, Harvey Hardison. Johnson had 189 votes, Hardison, 188. That one vote makes the difference between being on the 5-member Town Board, and not.

Lisa Bennett says that there is one provisional ballot that has not been counted. It is the ballot of someone who went to vote at the Straight Road fire station on Tuesday but whose name was not on the list of registered voters.

Provisional Vote Could Be Counted At Official Canvas Next Tuesday.

In accordance with state law, that person was allowed to fill out a ballot, but it was kept to the side and not counted. Bennett says that she will research that provisional voter’s eligibility to vote in coming days. She will present her findings to the three-man Board of Elections next Tuesday, Nov 10 at 11am when the Board does the official canvas of the votes.

(NC law allows people to register and vote at the same time during the early voting period (which ended on the Saturday before the election. ) NC law does not allow people to register the day of an election.)

If the Board of Elections decides to count that ballot, it will be opened next Tuesday. If the voter chose Hardison and not Johnson, it could tie the race for 5th place. If the voter chose neither, or voted only for Johnson, Bennett notes, it could leave the results as they are.

Two years ago, there was a tie for the fifth seat on Oriental’s Town Board. Both Candy Bohmert and Barbara Venturi received the same number of votes. The race was decided by pulling a name out of a flower pot at the canvassing session.

This year, both Venturi and Bohmert were elected — without use of a flower pot. They, and Sherrill Styron and Jennifer Roe who were also elected will serve on the board for the next 2 years.

Bill Sage was re-elected mayor. He ran unopposed.

There were 20 write-in votes in the Mayor’s race and 12 in the Town Commissioner races. The listings of write-in votes is below.

Turnout of voters: 47.6%.

In all, 443 voters cast ballots in this year’s municipal elections in Oriental. That’s 47.6 % of the registered voters. The turnout, says Bennett, was “pretty good for a municipal election.”

339 voted inside the Fire Station on Tuesday. 4 voted curbside. 3 voted absentee by mail and 97 voted in the early ‘one-stop’ voting before Tuesday.

Those 443 voters represent more than half of Oriental’s actual population.

More Registered Voters Than Residents

Another number of note from the Board of Elections office: 931. That’s the number of people who are registered to vote in Oriental’s municipal elections.

931 is a number that exceeds the number of people who live in Oriental. The 2000 census put Oriental’s population at 875, a figure comprised of adults and non-voting children.

Projections for the 2010 census and from the State of North Carolina indicate the official population figure will be even lower than 875 — by several dozen people.

So, how can the town have 56 more voters on the rolls than live in the town?

Lisa Bennett says it may happen because Oriental sees “people moving in and out,” and she cannot easily purge the voter list of people who’ve moved away. “I can’t just remove somebody because their neighbor says they’ve moved away.” Bennett says she has to see a “paper back-up” such as a death certificate or notification from the person that they live somewhere else.

If someone moves from Oriental and registers to vote in another town in North Carolina, “we would catch it,” Bennett says, because of the computerized system in North Carolina. In those instances, she would strike their names from the Oriental voter rolls. But if that person were to move to another state and register there, there is at the moment no automated way of letting the Pamlico Elections Director know that.

Bennett says that every two years she does a “list maintenance” and sends out cards to those who have not voted in the previous two federal elections. If the cards are returned to her office as “undeliverable” the voter is considered Inactive and their name is flagged on the voter rolls. Two years later, if the card sent to that address is returned, the name is removed from the list.

Write-Ins

In the Mayoral race, in which incumbent Bill Sage ran unopposed, there were 9 votes for Al Herlands, who was Sage’s opponent in the 2007 elections. Former mayor and current Town Commissioner Sherrill Styron received 4 write in votes for Mayor.

Write in votes for Mayor:
Al Herlands (9)
Sherrill Styron (4)
Greg Bohmert
Mickey Mouse
Paul Olson
Charlie Overcash
Melinda Penkava
Q
Sandy Winfrey

Write in votes for Commissioner:

Don Draper
Henry Frazer
Neil Haggard
Al Herlands
Kathy Kellam
Donald Mau
Bill Michne
Bob Miller
Melinda Penkava (2)
Malcolm Selden
Dick Whitman

Posted Wednesday November 4, 2009 by Melinda Penkava