Results unchanged in ballot canvass

Published 7:34 pm Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The Beaufort County Board of Elections canvass of ballots marked in the June 7 primary resulted in no changes in results, other than some candidates picking up additional votes by way of provisional ballots and absentee ballots.

In the Republican primary for the 3rd Congressional District, incumbent Walter B. Jones picked up seven votes during the county canvass, giving him 1,406 votes. Challenger Phil Law picked up on vote during the canvass, for a total of 326 votes. Taylor Griffin, another challenger, gained no votes during the board’s review Tuesday morning.

In the Democratic primary for the 3rd District, Ernest T. Reeves picked up four votes in the county canvass, giving him 511 votes. Challenger David Allan Hurst picked up one vote during the ballot review, giving him 425 votes.

Jones and Reeves will take on each other in the Nov. 8 general election.

Across the 3rd District, the canvasses resulted in no change in the primary outcome.

The canvass of the ballots marked in the primary to determine the two candidates who move on to the general election to compete for a seat as an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court, Robert H. Edmunds picked up four votes, giving him a total of 1,337 votes, while Michael Morgan picked up four votes, giving him a total of 842 votes. They face each other in general election.

Sabra Jean Faires finished with 331 votes and Daniel Robertson finished with 256 votes.

“This was a terribly easy election. There were not a whole lot of voters or things on the ballots,” said Kellie Harris Hopkins, Beaufort County’s elections director.

The only hiccup in the primary occurred when a ballot from a voter in the Gilead precinct somehow made its way to the ballot box in the Chocowinity precinct. Currently, the two precincts’ polling places are located in the same building, the Chocowinity Volunteer Fire Department.

The 10 mail-in absentee ballots counted Tuesday did not arrive at the board’s office in time to be counted the day of the primary, but they arrived later in time to be counted, Hopkins said.

Six provisional ballots were marked during the primary. The board accepted three of them, rejected the other three. Those ballots were rejected because the voters did not have ID when they shoed up at the polls. They were instructed to take proper identification to the Board of Elections before noon Monday so their votes could be counted. They did not do that.

Two voters who did not have IDs when they arrived at the polls and market ballots later took the IDs to the board’s office. Those ballots were accepted.

One voter, an elderly woman, showed up at the poll with an expired driver’s license. She no longer drives. She claimed a “reasonable impediment” to producing a valid ID. The board accepted her ballot. State law allows a board of elections to accept such a ballot.

The filing period for a seat on the Beaufort County Soil and Water Conservation District’s Board of Supervisors began at noon Monday and ends at noon June 30. Tracy Warren of Chocowinity currently holds the seat. The three elected board members on the five-member board serve staggered, four-year terms. The North Carolina Soil and Water Conservation Commission appoint two board members.

In another election-related matter, the North Carolina State Board of Elections will open a special filing period for a vacant seat on the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

The filing period begins at noon July 11 and ends at noon July 15.  Qualified candidates should file at the state board’s office at 441 N. Harrington St., Raleigh.

Judge Martha Greer vacated her seat on the Court of Appeals in March, two years before the end of her second term. The person elected to replace her will serve an eight-year term.

 

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.

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