Just over 2 percent percent of Beaufort County’s 32,381 registered voters marked ballots during the early voting period for Tuesday’s primary elections.

During the early voting period, 691 voters marked ballots, or 2.1 percent of the county’s eligible voters. Early voting began May 26 and ended Saturday. The early voting breakdown by day follows: May 26, 74 voters; May 27, 111 voters; May 31, 97 voters; June 1, 107 voters; June 2, 101 voters; June 3, 118 voters and June 4, 83 voters.

As for Tuesday’s primary, voter turnout in Beaufort County likely will be light, according to the Beaufort County Board of Elections. Polls at the county’s 21 precincts open at 6:30 a.m. and close at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“It’s June. It’s not a second primary. It’s another primary. People are just not conditioned to vote in June,” said Kellie Harris Hopkins, Beaufort County’s elections director. “They’re people on vacation. It’s the congressional primary.”

Asked if confusion among some voters — voters who voted for congressional candidates in the March 15 primary but did not realize their votes did not count in the congressional races — is a factor in low voter turnout in this primary, Hopkins said, “I’ve not heard anybody say that. I guess that could be a factor, although I’ve not seen any evidence of it being that way. Voters are usually informed or not informed. I don’t know that it being on the ballot in March made a difference. It may have, but I haven’t heard anybody say, ‘I know I voted in that so I’m not coming in June.’”

Hopkins continued, “There’s just not a whole lot of buzz in this particular election. The signs are out. The commercials are running. The candidates, most definitely, are present in the community. We’ll see. It may be we have a better turnout on Election Day.”

Although the ballots used for the March 15 primaries included the names of U.S. House candidates in contested primaries, votes for those candidates were not counted. They were not counted because the primaries for those candidates were moved to June 7 after a federal court ordered the North Carolina General Assembly to redraw boundaries for the state’s 13 congressional districts. After doing so, the Legislature delayed the primary for the U.S. House until June 7. Under that new plan, the candidate receiving the most votes in a primary would automatically win the primary and would not have to receive at least 40 percent of the votes cast, an exception to existing state law.