home

10:05p TownDock.net now has the election results. Bill Sage has been re-elected Mayor by a wide margin. The five candidates on the ballot for Oriental’s five Town Board seats appear to be have been elected. The fifth place on the Town Board, however, could be in question. Write-in candidate (and current Commissioner) Warren Johnson now is just 3 votes shy of ballot candidate Hugh Grady.

There remain 7 provisional ballots that are yet to be counted and that could have an impact on that race for the 5th seat. The provisional ballots are something the Board of Elections would weigh in on at its official canvassing meeting next Tuesday.

Another possible factor is how some additional write-in votes are to be counted. Pamlico County Elections Director LIsa Bennett says that she hopes to get the three-member County Board of Elections to hold a ‘write-in approval meeting’ as early as this Thursday. There, she says, they can determine whether to count some write-in votes that only provided a last name or that wrote in a different first name. (see below)

Today, 313 voters cast ballots at the Oriental fire station. 310 voted inside and 3 voted curbside.

In early voting from late-October until last Saturday, 115 votes were cast. That number is made up of people casting absentee ballots and those who availed themselves of one-stop voting.

Mayor

• Katy Pugh – 131

• Jennifer G. Roe – 78

• Bill Sage – 214

Write-in candidates for Mayor:

• Warren Johnson – 2

• Bob Miller – 1

Commissioner

• Michele Bessette – 208

• Hugh Grady – 158

• Sherrill Styron – 320

• Larry Summers -281

• Barbara Venturi – 262

Write-in candidates for Commissioner:

• Pat Herlands – 132

• Warren Johnson – 155

In all, more than 287 write-in votes were cast, most of them split between Warren Johnson and Pat Herlands. On Tuesday alone, at the fire station, more than 250 write-in votes were cast. Lisa Bennett says only those getting 5 votes or more are officially counted. But as the tallies were made at the fire station Tuesday night, the following were among the other write-ins who got some votes for the Town Board race.

Katy Pugh – 3

Candy Bohmert – 5

Sandy Winfrey – 1

David White – 2

William Johnson – 1

Warren Harding – 1

David Cox – 2

Larry Summers – 1

Al Herlands – 1

Herlands – 2 (just the last name was written)

Johnson – 2 (just the last name was written)

Jim Barton – 2

Walter Johnson – 1

Ken Midyette – 1

Henry Frazer – 1

Candy Cane – 1

Kathy Kellam – 1

Yvonne Jones – 2

Charlie Overcash – 3

Jennifer Roe – 4

Posted Tuesday November 8, 2011 by Keith N. Smith