Voters Head To Polls

HIGH POINT - WXII12.com

Candidates in municipal races throughout the Triad anxiously will be awaiting results from today’s election as thousands of voters head to the polls.

According to election officials in Davidson, Guilford and Randolph counties, turnout for early voting, which ended Saturday, has been light. While election officials hope for large crowds at the polls today, they say low turnout often is the case in odd-year elections.

“Early voting in an odd year is a different animal than it is in an even year or presidential election,” said Charlie Collicutt, Guilford County Board of Elections deputy director. “We saw over half of the votes cast in the presidential (election) came either through early voting or mail. We aren’t even going to come close to that.”

Of the 31,376 registered voters, Davidson County had 703 residents cast their ballots early for this year’s municipal election, according to Ruth Huneycutt, director of Davidson County Board of Elections. Huneycutt said 547 voted early at the Thomasville Public Library. She attributed those numbers to a referendum on the Chair City’s ballot that would change Thomasville’s election system.

Patsy Foscue, Randolph County Board of Elections director, said the county had 885 early voters out of the 53,500 who are registered to vote in today’s election. Foscue noted the importance of the municipal elections on why she believes there should be larger turnouts on odd-year elections.

“I’d like to see us have a large turnout because these elections do affect everyday life more than any other elections do, but we don’t normally have a good turnout for municipal elections,” she said.

Collicutt predicted about 20 percent of Guilford County’s voters would cast their ballots in this year’s municipal election.

“There may be some correlation between how many people voted early and how many are going to turn out (today), but a really small number of early voting does not mean the same thing in this election as it did in the presidential election,” he said.

This article appeared in Tuesday's edition of the High Point Enterprise.

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