Satellite polling places open Wednesday

Published 3:34 pm Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Three satellite polling places in Beaufort County open Wednesday as the early voting period winds down this week.

The Beaufort County Board of Elections opens those polling places in Aurora, Belhaven and Chocowinity at 8 a.m. Wednesday, closing at 6 p.m. Those satellite sites will be open those same hours Thursday and Friday, and from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. The Aurora satellite site is at the Aurora Commu­nity Building, 442 Third St. Belhaven’s satellite site is at the John A. Wilkinson Center, 144 W. Main St. The Chocowinity satellite location is at Chocowin­ity Volunteer Fire Depart­ment, 512 E. N.C. Highway 33.

County elections officials expect voter turnout to pick up in the final days of early voting, which it’s done in previous elections.

As of Saturday, 61 voters in the Chocowinity precinct had returned absentee ballots, the most from any of the county’s 21 precincts. The Tranter’s Creek precinct was next with 49 voters returning absentee ballots, followed by the Washington 4 precinct with 44 absentee ballots returned.

Tuesday was the last day for civilian voters to request absentee ballots, which must be returned by Election Day. For military and overseas voters, Monday is the last day to request absentee mail-in ballots by 5 p.m. Those ballots must be received electronically by the board of elections by 7:30 p.m. Election Day.

The last day for a board of election to receive an absentee ballot from a civilian given a late exception is by 5 p.m. Nov. 14 (if mailed and postmarked on or before Nov. 14). Military and overseas voters given a late exception have until Nov. 17 for their absentee ballots to be received and counted, if mailed before 5 p.m. Election Day.

As of Monday evening, 8,354 county voters had marked ballots at the board’s office during the one-stop voting period for Tuesday’s general election. That’s an average of 835 voters a day in the first 10 days of the early voting period at the board’s office. With the satellite locations opening today, that average could increase as voters have three more sites to mark ballots.

During the first 10 days of the early voting period for the 2012 general election, 9,179 voters cast ballots, for an average of 918 voters a day. In the 2012 general election, 12,134 voters marked ballots during the 13-day early voting period, according to data from the Board of Elections.

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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