By By BETTY MITCHELL GRAY
Staff Writer
With contested mayoral races in Washington, Aurora and Belhaven and several contested races for council, board of commissioners or board of aldermen seats in Beaufort County municipalities, interest in early voting is greater this year than in the 2007 municipal elections, according to early voting figures.
The numbers of ballots cast in early, or one-stop, voting in the county’s municipal elections is higher this year than in municipal elections two years ago, according to Elly Draper, an elections specialist with the Beaufort County Board of Elections.
Since Oct. 15, when early voting began, 380 people had cast ballots as of Friday afternoon at the Board of Elections office, 55 more than had voted at the same time two years ago, she said. Early voting ends at 1 p.m. today. Voters who miss that deadline will have to cast ballots in their home precincts Election Day.
“We’ve already surpassed what we did two years ago, and we still have one day to go,” Draper said Friday during a brief interview.
Early voting, also known as one-stop, no-excuse voting is not as heavy during years when only municipal elections take place in the county, according to Kellie Harris Hopkins, elections director for Beaufort County. She does not expect that trend to change this year.
“It’s going to be lower than usual because we don’t have the usual amount of folks voting because all we have this year are municipal elections. It shouldn’t be too busy,” Hopkins said three days before the early voting period began this month.
There are about 9,000 registered voters in Beaufort County eligible to cast ballots in municipal races. Of these, 6,704 are registered to vote in the City of Washington races, according to elections figures.
Elections officials said Friday that it was too early to predict trends from the voting turnout so far.
In the 2008 general election, which included a presidential election, more than one-third of Beaufort County’s registered voters took advantage of one-stop, no-excuse voting to mark their ballots. At the end of the one-stop, no-excuse voting period last fall, 11,105 voters had market their ballots. At that time, there were 31,984 registered voters in the county.
Early voting for all municipal races is being conducted at the elections office at 1308 Highland Drive, Suite 104, in Washington (at the rear of the former Tideland Mental Health Center building).